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. read more