When? - 27th of October, 2011
Where? - Platform 28. 82 Village St. Docklands
Price? – $21.90
Barry? - No
Website? - http://www.platform28.com.au
Reviewers – Grace, Kim, Lee, Nikki, Pat, Tony
Platform 28 was discovered after a fellow parma lover on Twitter (username @ParmaTUB) visited and gave it a seal of approval. The docklands is an area we have been meaning to hit for quite some time, so with high hopes we headed across the road from Etihad Stadium, to Platform 28.
First things first, Platform 28 is a gorgeous establishment, great areas for drinking and dining both indoors and out, separate dining room if you’re feeling fancy and an upper level that seemed to be reserved purely for functions. Platform 28 would be a perfect spot for a brew before a game of footy at the aforementioned Etihad stadium (without naming names a couple of AFL footballers were spied having a drink while we awaited our parmage)
The pub was busy for 7pm on a Thursday, we quickly put this down to their ‘Happy Hour’ $10 cocktails on Thursday evenings, we elbowed our way through the crowd, ordered our parmas at the bar and sat awaiting their arrival.
Before we get to the food I will preface the photos by saying that this was a dark pub - even though daylight savings has graced us with an extra hour of light, a decent photo of this parma was going to be difficult, I was going to have to break a cardinal rule of food photography (or iphoneography) and use the flash - which always leads to a shitty looking parma.
Our food arrived and I snapped the first photo - It was black as black, I plugged it into photoshop and raised the light as much as I could - below is the result…
After photoshoppage it didn’t turn out as bad as I was expecting - but for completeness sake, here is the dreaded flash photo
Anyway, pictures aside we picked up our cutlery and dug in. The schnitzel itself was pure, barely hammered chicken breast, I normally put the cross-section photo at the end of the parma description, however I’m bringing it forward to give you an idea of how thick this beast is -
The schnitzel tried to cover itself up by covering its juicy breasts with cheese - but we still got a great peek at the goods!
There was plenty of cheese, ham and napoli and the crumbing was adequate, there was minimal schnitzel nudity but to be honest the chicken carried such a great fresh taste that it wasn’t even necessary. The ham was thick and cheese tasted great without being overpowering, the napoli was plentiful and had a very sweet flavour - Apart for some very slight burnt edges on some of the nudity, this was a great tasting bird.
There was quite a decent serving of chips & they were beautifully cooked, however they were quite boring. Its been so long since we’ve had a surprisingly good chip grace our plate… is it so much to ask! A lot of us reached straight for the salt shaker after our first chip to give it some spice. Not much to complain about though, they were well cooked and there was a lot of ‘em
The salad was pretty damn good - also in a large serving, with lettuce, onion, tomato, lettuce, capsicum and sprouts. served in a separate bowl keeping it nice and fresh, my only complaint would be that they may have gone a bit overboard on the sprouts, there was so many of them I could barely taste anything else - I’ve got nothing against sprouts, they definitely separated this salad from the pack, but theres a fine line between interesting addition and overboard, especially for an ingredient that is usually used as a garnish.
But enough of my ramblings! what did everyone else think?
As predicted the crowd thinned out after happy hour ended and it was much easier to get ourselves a drink. After finishing up with parmas the group headed to the movies to catch ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ … I try to refrain from cursing in these reviews but fuck me that was some scary shit.
Overall this was a great parma - Guaranteed not to leave you hungry. Platform 28 has a fantastic atmosphere and as I said at the beginning would be perfect spot to stop into before heading over to Etihad to watch a game of footy.
Definitely one to check out.
Parma - 7.96
Chips - 5.83
Salad - 6.50
Value - 6.42
Total - 6.93
The search continues…
Another thanks to @ParmaTUB for putting us onto this parma, and while you’re checking out his twitter be sure to check ours out as well!