Artemis L.
Yelp
We ordered the Classic Sydney Salad (for me) and the Aussie Sausage Roll with Chips, Beans, and Gravy (for my husband) for our main dishes tonight. We got a to-go order.
We ordered the NZ lamb sandwich for our shared appetizer. The staff kindly substituted lettuce for bread on this sandwich, since gluten has the potential to badly affect a medical condition that I have.
We got a bottle of Pinot Noir that we thought was sourced from Australia based on the menu information, but it ended up being sourced from New Zealand. I liked that the wine menu had 4 wine options that were sourced from Australia (or possibly from NZ instead, apparently).
I really wanted to love this place. Love the name, love the Australia/New Zealand theme, love the location, love the building.
However, I didn't love the food, and overall nothing really stood out about the service one way or the other. It also smelled pretty bad in there, a mix of beer and urine smells. I recognize that this is a pub and not a fine dining establishment, though, so I chose my star rating with that in mind. For pub food (and please keep in mind that I haven't been to many pubs overall, so I don't have a vast basis for comparison), it was maybe a bit better than average.
My Classic Sydney Salad was decent. The dressing was pleasantly tangy, and I think I could taste a fairly good balsamic in it. The vegetables were fresh, and the portion size was fine. I didn't eat more than about a quarter of it, though, and I'm hungry. Just couldn't muster the motivation to continue eating it.
I wasn't a fan of the lamb sandwich, and I didn't end up eating more than a couple of bites of that. The lamb started off tasting okay, but as I kept chewing it I made a bit of a grimace and didn't want to eat any more of it. It tasted worse and worse to me the more I chewed it. And I hate to say this, but I actually spit out my first bite of a fry - the texture was odd, kind of a bit mushy, but the flavor was very bland as well. I tried three more fries, but all 3 of them met the same fate. I don't often eat fries, but I do usually like fries well enough.
My husband thought his Aussie sausage roll was quite good in terms of taste and texture. I really wanted to like something in our dinner from here, so I took a tiny bite out of the middle of his sausage roll. Relief washed over me, since it actually tasted really flavorful. Because I am gluten free and the sausage is enveloped in a huge amount of puff pastry, I couldn't eat any more of it, in order to respect my gluten avoidance. But, I would've eaten more of the sausage roll if I could've, and the texture of the puff pastry looked flaky and lovely, and it was an enticing golden brown in color.
My husband and I stopped by this pub tonight because I ended up spontaneously buying Kangaroo Onesies for us to wear this Halloween, and then I ran with the Australian theme a bit and we special ordered small individually-wrapped Caramello Cadbury chocolates with Koalas on them, sourced from Australia, for our Halloween candy for trick-or-treaters this year. We also ordered a cute little Koala hood-hat for our cat, and we bought a small stuffed kangaroo to put next to our Halloween candy bowl tomorrow night. When I found out about this pub, I was delighted that there is an Australian-themed restaurant in our area.
Unfortunately I wasn't super happy with our experience here, but I'm giving 4 stars because most of my complaints are fairly minor and I do understand that having excessively high expectations for pub food just isn't realistic. I wish this business well, and I think it is a fun and unique addition to the Ballard restaurant scene.