The John Curtin Hotel

 I've been working on something special for all my readers. So far its in spreadsheet form, but its a list of bars/pubs/cafes/anywhere that serves food and their food specials. It's pretty impressive so far, I've got 34 places and their weekly specials :)

Without further ado I present to you Super Wednesdays! $12 Grain fed Black Angus Porterhouse with chips or mash and a salad and your choice of sauce.

Yummmy! We all had mushroom sauce, and what impressed me the most about it is the fact there are large pieces of mushrooms in it! Normally at other places its some brown sauce they call mushroom, but this you can see the mushroom! The sauce was very tasty, much like gravy, and they gave you heaps of it! My chips was soaked in the sauce :) The meat was very good. I felt like I could taste the black angus grain fedness. It didn't taste like normal steak. Must be the grain :)

Another good thing about this meal was the portion control. The meat wasn't some huge slab on the plate, but it was a good size so it fills you up but doesn't give you food coma.

We had our doubts at first, and Jeff wasn't getting good feelings about the place when we first got there.

Its very dark in there and it is definately a grungy uni bar.

Heres what the back of the bar looks like. It doesn't look dark here but we had crazy flash going. Jeff said the toilets are the scariest he has ever been to, I did notice a lot of graffiti on the wall...

Anyway if you haven't gotten the overall feel of the place, heres another one. While having dinner the movie that was playing was called "Dead Snow", its a German nazi zombie movie.Uni students love zombie movies.

Our food rating: 

John Curtin Hotel  www.johncurtinhotel.com 29 Lygon St Carlton VIC 3053 (03) 9663 6350

Butchers Grill - Bourke Street

Butchers Grill, 141 Bourke St, Melbourne

Like most nights I sit at home starving and waiting for my beloved to finish work so we can have dinner.
This particular night was a Tuesday night and no one wants to pay full price on a Tuesday.


On the web I went and found a whole bunch of restaurants (mostly in Docklands ><) that do a 50% off food bill on Tuesdays (when each person purchases a main and dessert).


By the time Dylan was done with work and have dropped off our colleagues in the city, it was already 9 o'clock. A race, a race to find the restaurant before they tell us the kitchens closed. Fortunately it was pretty easy to find the place and before long we were walking up to the joint. From outside the place was packed! People are out there taking advantage of this Tuesday deal :)


There isn't enough staff for the Tuesday rush, so instead of getting seated we were escorted to what felt like the naughty corner, a small and narrow outside terrace (I really wish I took a photo of the place). From outside, on metals chairs we watched as people happily ate their meals. By this time of the night we were watching people enjoying dessert, and they looked pretty nice too :)


After awhile we wondered if they had forgotten about us, as we were tucked away in a corner and easily forgotten. Luckily one of the waiters walking by noticed us and lead us inside. We were seated at a small table that was free when we first entered the restaurant. Why didn't they just let us sit there to begin with??


Anyway, they had some cocktail specials, all cocktails are $9.90. I ordered my drink, the amaretto sour and Dylan ordered his mojito. It was the worst amaretto sour I've ever had in my life. So sugary sweet it tasted like cough medicine. The mojito was very sweet as well, I actually thought it was better than the amaretto, maybe because it didn't taste like cough meds. Cocktails FAIL.


For 9 o'clock at night we sure ordered a lot. For starters we had the "Salt & pepper calamari served in a lettuce cup with lime aioli $17". It came out pretty quickly, and the serving was quite large. Very good calamari :) It was soft and not stringy, just the right amount of salt and pepper. For some reason there was some tomato sauce of some kind on the side where a few of the calamaris were resting on. They were gonners, the tomato didn't match the flavour and Dylan fought to not have the ones contaminated with the tomato.
We were bought quite full after the calamaris and I was contemplating calling it a night. I was done. But we had already ordered our mains, so we continued on.


I should mention they did give us some very nice complementary bread (Turkish bread), which Dylan chowed up pretty quickly. This probably caused us to feel full by now.


For mains I had the Eye fillet (200g, $32) with hot mustard and seeded mustard served on crisp onion garlic mash.
The steak was average... ok slightly above average, but nothing to rave about. The crisp onion was odd, the garlic mash had a nice flavour but they didn't mash it enough so it was a bit lumpy. 


Dylan had the "Mediterranean style chicken parmigiana with prosciutto, ham, kasseri cheese & ratatouille $25". The waitress said it was a very big serving and she was right! Still nothing much to say about it, its just a parma with Mediterranean style *shrug* I've had better parma's before. They tried to make it fancy, which is nice, but I don't think it was appreciated.


By this stage we were sooooo stuffed we thought about not continuing on, but this meant to getting the 50% off! We thought about just ordering dessert and leaving... sure.. lets say we'll do that...


By the time dessert rolled around all the things I wanted was sold out :(


We settled for the "Home made crepes with chocolate sauce & berry compote $14" and
"Baked clingstone peach cheesecake with macerated fruit and sesame wafer $14". The crepe was the worst crepe ever! It was cold, and hard and chewy. Just not nice at all. The sauce wasn't very tasty nor chocolaty.


The baked cheesecake was great though :) So great I didn't get to eat most of it. I just played around with my crepe and gave up on dessert. 


The bill came to $70 for two mains, two desserts, two cocktails and a starter
I reckon thats a pretty good price for the huge amount of food we shouldn't have eaten.


The venue is nice and so is the food. I'll definitely come back again or suggest it to some friends... only on a Tuesday.


Sorry for the lack of photos, forgot my camera that night. Here is a token image I pilfered off their website :P