[info]
When? - 1st of September, 2010
Where? - 825 Donnybrook Rd, Donnybrook
Price? - $18.90, $12 ‘Parma Night’ on Mondays
Barry? - No, but EVERYTHING else!
Website? - None
Reviewers - Adam Y, Bec, Lee, Luke, Nikki, Shanan, Tony Q[/info]
I have often started a parma review saying that the place we were reviewing that week was ‘like a country pub’, Well this week we went to a real country pub - The Donnybrook Hotel.
Now I’m unsure as to whether it is the Donnybrook Hotel, or the Donnybrook Springs Hotel, Google seems to think its the Donnybrook springs, but I couldn’t see the word ‘springs’ anywhere on the exterior, either way, we hopped in the parma bus and drove the relatively quick 40k’s from Northern Melbourne, where the majority of the review team reside (took about half an hour, quick sticks!)
As soon as we arrived at the Donnybrook I realised one thing straight away - we should’ve come on Monday, a quick look at the menu showed that Monday night was their parma night, $12 and nine different varieties of novelty parma (Including ‘Volcano’, ‘Seafood’, ‘Bolognese’, a few more I can’t remember and the ‘Double Decker’ for $20) definitely worth a look.
We ordered our parmas at the regular price of $18.90 and grabbed some drinks, as this is a true blue country pub there isn’t a huge selection of beers available, but they had the basics and thats all that we needed! There was no Barry at this pub but it wasn’t missed as the range of things there to keep one entertained whilst the parma is being created is phenomenal, from what I saw there was -
- Candy/Claw machine
- Pinball
- Pool
- Mr Cashman (Last seen at the Mona Castle Hotel)
- Paper ticket machine (Last seen at The Rose Hotel)
- Digital Jukebox
- One of those machines where you put in $2 and get a little toy
Mr. Cashman is a favourite of ours, so we played that for awhile, won a few bucks which we promptly put back into the Candy machine and won our desert.
Before our parma arrived our entree of communal garlic bread and bowl of chips arrived, the chips were fresh and crispy and the garlic bread was delicious (who doesn’t love a good slice of GB), but the communal bowl of chips brought up an interesting discussion on putting condiments on communal chips.
Not long after the entree’s were polished off, the main course arrived -
Nom Nom friggin’ Nom! This parma looked amazing when it arrived, points for presentation Donnybrook! The schnitzel was of a decent size, real chicken breast and acceptable thickness (not massive, but pretty good). The crumbs were processed and a little thick for my taste, but they weren’t off-putting at all and complimented the chicken very well, the obligatory slice of ham was absent from the donny parma, but there was a generous coating of a napoli and a very sharp tasty cheese, it was well cooked with some very attractive green bits sprinkled on top (as you can see)
You can’t quite tell from the above photo, but I got a massive serving of chips on my parma, I can’t really fault them for stacking the parma on top as there was simply nowhere else for them to go. Other reviewers at the table didn’t quite get the generous serving that I did (pfff, who cares about them anyway) but the chips were fresh and crispy, they were unseasoned, however there were salt shakers on the table and tomato sauce readily available.
The salad was presented amazingly (as you can kind of see) each parmigiana’s salad was served inside a lettuce leaf, with capsicum, carrot, cucumber, tomato, onion, lettuce and (a true sign of a country pub) an orange slice on top. As far as garden salads go, this one is the prettiest i’ve seen in a long time, Unfortunately there wasn’t much in the way of dressing and while looking amazing, fell short a little in terms of flavour.
We promptly polished off our parmas, then we noticed the kids at other tables drawing on the butcher paper laid out on every table, I won’t go into detail, and they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when we left the table looked something like this …
The Donnybrook is a great little pub, very busy so be sure to book in advance! There was a roaring open fire to warm up on and flat screen TV’s around the dining area to entertain while eating, There was lots of discussion on the drive home about it and the general consensus was it was a damn nice parma! I’m a little shattered that we didn’t come down on mondays parma night as one of the novelty parmas listed on the menu wouldve gone down a treat - I’d especially like to give the Double Decker a try, seeing as at $20 its only a dollar less than what they charge for the weekday parma.
On the way out I put $2 into the toy redemption machine and picked up this little ball of awesome …
Thats Marvin the friggin’ Martian!!!
Going rural was good, and we are gonna try and occasionally hit up more country Victoria pubs, so stay tuned for that in the future, although next weeks will be closer to home… so keep an eye out Melbourne restaurants, you never know when and where we might turn up!
Parma - 7.1
Chips - 6.7
Salad - 6.1
Value - 6.4
Total - 6.69
The search continues …
