Australian Pubs v restaurant.

[Roxy]

On the whole I find Australian restaurant standards appalling (admittedly I live in the wops, I know there are good places in bigger centres) both the food and service. I can only assume some survive because they have so little to beat, when people have no experience of quality food and service its easy to be fooled into thinking mediocrity (or worse) is normal.

However I have to say I find Australian pubs to be pretty good. Sure they are not the gourmet, trendy type pub restaurants you see in the UK but then they aren’t pretending to be anything they are not.

They are simple - nothing wrong with roast beef, and rather predictable – a foreigner could be forgiven for thinking chicken parma was the national dish, but for value for money they are hard to beat. Quality is generally in keeping with (or better than) the price you pay.

I have become increasingly frustrated with restaurants, ‘upmarket’ cafes and the like, so I have pretty much stoped going to them. I find it a personal insult to pay high prices for poor food and even worse service, so, with a few exceptions – I stay home or go to one of the pubs. Not exactly what you want for an intimate, special dinner but often great for something unpretentious and good value.

The best (well only) place I have found for quality food out here is at All Saints in Rutherglen. While I can’t fault the food I am at a loss to understand why they don’t get the heating and cooling sorted out. The climate out here is predictable – very hot in summer and very cold in winter, how hard is that.

Surely when you pay $170 (or more) for Sunday lunch for two you would expect to be able to eat in comfort. In summer we had to leave before pudding and coffee because I was so hot, a few weeks ago I ate wearing my coat and scarf, as did many of the other patrons – had to take my gloves off though :-).

We will go there again but only during temperate months.

I see there is going to be another series of the TV show where two restaurants compete to improve (interesting that many of them don’t think they need to) lets hope some restaurant owners watch it and are prepared to stop being so arrogant and learn something.