[info]
When? - 18th of August, 2011
Where? - Turf Bar. 131 Queen St, Melbourne
Price? – $19.50 ($15 ‘Parmas of the World’ Wednesday)
Barry? - No, But 2 pool tables and digital tabletop poker & bocce
Website? - http://www.turfbar.com.au/
Reviewers – Adam, Cale, Lee, Matt, Pat, Tony[/info]
This week we visit Turf Bar on Queen st., however we had not intended to visit Turf Bar on Queen st. - All week long we had planned to visit the ‘Lanai Restaurant & Bar’ which is squirreled away within the CQ nightclub.
I had seen someone from CQ post their opinions of someone’s parma on facebook, and was interested to see if they could put their parma where their mouth was - Unfortunately when I called on Wednesday to book a table I was informed that Lanai Restaurant only serves food at Lunchtime, not at dinner - And seeing as we have yet to fulfill our dream of eating chicken parmigiana for a living, our day jobs prevent us from visiting any pubs during the lunch hour.
So! It took a quick googling to discover that the Turf Bar, literally next door to CQ, also offer up the combination of chicken, ham, cheese and napoli that we all know and love. Proximity to CQ was perfect so it didn’t mess with anyones plans at all - I booked the table, we piled into the Parma Bus and headed down.
As soon as I walked into the Turf Bar I was in love, this pub is a gem. First of all, you have to go downstairs to get into the pub, which gives it a massive ‘Cheers’ vibe. Massive bar, heaps of wood everywhere (its a sign of a good pub when they have a lot of wood. And coat hooks. A good pub has lots of coat hooks!) plenty of TV screens running sports, great looking meals coming out of the kitchen (there is a 1kg T-bone steak on the menu for $60, advised to be ordered 24 hours in advance) and the bar girls were amazingly friendly and helpful.
Actually, if you are having trouble picturing the place, think ‘MacLarens’ from How I Met Your Mother and you’re pretty much there. Awesome.
Turf Bar reminds me so much of this pub, but nicer … and with more guys in suits.
Anyway, back to the food.
We grabbed a pint and took our seats in the dining area, There was full table service available for drinks as well as food, but we opted to get our drinks from the bar (it makes it easier when it comes to splitting the bill at the end of the night).
We ordered our parmas and kicked back, Signs posted around the place indicated that we had missed Turf Bar’s $15 ‘Parma’s of the World’ night by 24 hours, so we had regular parmas at $19.50 a pop, not too shabby if the parma is quality.
In fairly short order (I forgot to time it again) our meals arrived.
Looking good so far, it struck me as a little small when it first arrived, but that fear was quickly allayed after I cut into it, the chicken breast was thick and juicy, well crumbed, with some very minor schnitzel nudity - and even then it was only partial nudity, the sideboob of parmas.
Gotta love that sideboob
They weren’t at all tight with the napoli and cheese, the smoked ham was delicious and it spread its flavour throughout the parma giving it a delicious smokey taste. Well cooked, well crumbed, real, unprocessed chicken breast. A fine chicken parma.
I need to start putting a 20c coin or something in the cross section for perspective, it was thicker than it looks in this photo.
The chips were set beside the parma (thank god) and in abundance. They were well seasoned with chicken salt and came with a personal tomato sauce pot on the plate, you may remember from our review of The Exchange that I am a big fan of personal sauce pots. A great touch.
Unfortunately the salad was so/so - A garden salad with Lettuce, onion, tomato cucumber, some mustard seeds and a cream dressing. It was fine as far as garden salads go, and by no means was it bad, just nothing outstanding.
After we finished our food we adjourned to the pool tables for a game before heading out, quite often on parma attempts we just eat and leave, but the Turf was so damn inviting I just didn’t want to go.
Had a few more pints, and there was almost a de-pantsing at the pool tables … almost.
The Turf Bar’s parma was pretty damn good and worth checking out, I’d be happy to pay $19.50 for it again so hitting it on the Wednesday Parma night would be gravy. The pub itself is amazing, I am in love and will definitely be returning in the near future.
On the way out I looked down through the window and saw this room, that I didn’t see from inside the bar -
Doesn’t that look like the cosiest goddamn room you’ve seen in your life?!
Parma - 7.25
Chips - 7.92
Salad - 5.58
Value - 7.58
Total - 7.12
The search continues…
