When? - 28th of July, 2010
Where? - The Dan O’Connell Hotel, 225 Canning St. Carlton
Price? - $12.00 ‘Parma, Pot n’ Trivia Wednesdays’, $17.00 standard menu.
Website? - http://www.thedan.com.au/
Reviewers - Adam Y, Bec, Brendan, Cale, Emma, Grace, Kathleen, Lee, Luke, Nikki, Shanan, Stefo, Tanya, Tony
UPDATE 01/10/18 - WE REVISITED THE DAN O’CONNELL AFTER 8 YEARS AWAY… CHECK OUT HOW MUCH IT IMPROVED HERE!
The Dan O’Connell Hotel is home to Melbournes biggest St. Patricks Day celebration, with the pub taking over the adjacent park and turning it into one massive, green, drunken festival. I’ve been to this celebration many times and yet before last night I’d never actually been inside the building.
While doing some research for this weeks attempt I’ve discovered that this years St. Pats party could have been the last for The Dan, with ridiculous new liquor licensing laws forcing them to close at 10pm, it seems like the future of one of the best parties Melbourne has all year may be in jeopardy … this calls for a bold, crying, frowny face :’( check out the ‘Save St. Patricks Day at the Dan O’Connell’ facebook group and show your support, it’d be a damn shame to see it shut up shop.
The Dan O’Connell can’t have its yearly St. Pat’s day party? that makes me a saaaad panda
Word came through the grape vine that The Dan was hosting a $12 ‘Parma, Pot n’ Trivia’ Wednesday night, we decided that if they do a parma anywhere near as well as they do St. Paddys day we would be in for a treat.
We arrived at The Dan and placed our order at the bar, the staff were friendly, helpful and more than happy to have a chat. The Dan itself has undergone some renovations of late, with a new paint job and a lovely new tiled bar and a gorgeous open fire, its a cozy little pub I’d be proud to call my local.
There were a fourteen reviewers this week, so the parmas took a little longer than we would’ve hoped to arrive, but they all came out simultaneously and we couldn’t really fault them for the delay due to the high amount we had ordered.
I quickly snapped the above photo and tucked in, upon dissection there was a slice of ham on the parma, which was appreciated by some, The schnitzels varied in size along the table, mine was about in the mid range of sizes we were served, not big, but not too small. The chicken was a little on the thin sized and seemed to be processed, crumbs were in abundance, as was the cheese and napoli. All up it was a cheap tasting parma, which is really what you would expect for a $12 pot, parma & Trivia night.
The chips and salad also suffered from a variance in serving size - I had the most chips out of the 14 served on my plate, which I would call a decent serving, others unfortunately weren’t so lucky. However they were hot on arrival, served beside the parma, not under it (points!), short a little seasoning but there was salt on the table.
The salad, while not suffering much discrepancy in size had a major issue with varying ingredients, some people got tomato salsa, others got none, some people got dressing, others got none, It was a real competition to see who got what.
A rare glimpse of the team hard at work
We finished our parmas just as the nights entertainment ‘Trashbag Trivia’ begun, and it definitely turned the night around for us. The trivia was funny, had interesting questions (including an all audio round) and was definitely the star of the night. So much so that the parma itself became secondary to the fun with the patrons & staff, which are obviously a close knit group of locals having a good time.
Unfortunately we didn’t win the grand prize (a full ‘Scrabble’ board game) but we definitely left satisfied. The drinks were cheap, and even though the parma wasn’t great it wasn’t that disappointing, we had so much fun playing trivia it was hard to really care and for only $12 with a free pot AND free entry into the trivia competition it would be hard to find a cheaper parma that offered that much entertainment.