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AND THE WINNER ISN’T …

It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. That’s how I like to think of the business of reviewing pub food in 500 of the top NSW pubs each year.

But please don’t think that it’s all sweetness and light. Take, for instance, the reviewer who came back from a hotel with this tale: “I am so traumatised from the experience that I’m not sure where to start. The rude owner who said ‘get off this table it’s for the trivia comp’ or the nachos nuked to death for six hours? Or the chicken burger with lifeless lettuce? I’ll give it 2/20 for magic.”

For those not in the know we mark the pubs out of 20, of which 12 points are available for the food, three for ambience, three for service and a further two for a “sprinkling of magic”. So why, I asked, give it anything for magic? “They were for the sleaze who grabbed my friend’s bum on exit.”

And did I mention how dangerous it can be? One reviewer, trying to keep our usual low profile, managed to set fire not only to her menu but then her newspapers, which flared into a “mini bonfire” that the bistro staff had to put out.

The reviews in the Pub Food Guide are all about 100-110 words long – just enough to fill you in on what’s good and what’s not but not enough room in which to wax lyrical. No, we save that for my top-secret Complaints Corner, into which things like this come in: “There was nothing redeeming about it. Had as much personality as dining inside Bunnings … the pizzas looked promising but at that point in the evening I actually had some hope … the bottoms where dusted with so much flour it was like eating concrete mix. Topping of garlic prawn? Er, send out the search party. Horrific. Even worse, the chicken burger came in a home-brand seeded roll that tasted like eating my kitchen sponge … we also had calamari that could be used to string a badminton racket.”

Or this: “I ordered a confit of duck leg with a walnut and rocket salad. I’d already asked them to remove the walnuts because I’m allergic to them – not as in ‘GET ME TO THE HOSPITAL’ or ‘THE EPIPEN IS IN MY BAG!’ allergic – but they didn’t know that. And what did I find in the salad?”

And then came this, in the style of acerbic British critic A. A. Gill, from a reviewer who waited 45 minutes for what was, he said, basically a deep-fried crab stick. At the end of a longer rant than we have space for here he concluded: “If the world runs out of metal for bullets may I make a suggestion; get yourself to this pub and use the pellets of dried-up rock they call bacon and load your gun with it. You could kill a few people; may I suggest you start with the bar staff?”