Royalty at the Prince of Wales

Yep - as the title of this post says, we were treated like royalty tonight at the POW. Thank god! I was starting to think I'd give up on this pub crawl business after my last 2 weeks counter meal/pub meal experiences.

Compare for yourself:

Last week (Queens Head) - I'd made a booking. Walked in to restaurant bar. Waited to be attended to about 5 minutes. Seated at Reserved table and handed the menu. (No conversation or engagement of any kind with us at this stage by anyone who worked there). Ignored for 20 minutes. Then asked if we wanted a drink. That was delivered. Waited for order to be taken. It was. Food came out, as described last week. Yuk.
I ate as described on previous post from the Salt & Pepper Calamari, and had taken one mouthful of one of the Tempura Mushrooms, and left the whole rest of plate intact. I didn't complain about the quality of the food when waitperson cleared the plates, but was astounded when she didn't ask me why I hadn't eaten the meal.
We were ignored again when we stood at the bar waiting to pay the bill. Waited a good 10 minutes, then asked a bar staff member if we could please pay. What the hell did he think we were doing standing there with open wallets for? I watched with interest to see what the problem was with their not serving us, but couldn't account for it. They weren't overly busy or rushed off their feet. They just couldn't give a shit.

This week - I'd booked. We were the first customers to arrive at the restaurant. We were greeted immediately in THE most natural and friendly manner possible by Aaron (as his nametag indicated) . Aaron told us tonight was the first night of their new menu and congratulated us on being their first customers to order from it. He showed us to our seats, bought water and menus straight away, bought drinks and explained the specials in a fun, teasing way. He took the piss out of my request for a well done scotch fillet (as he should) and generally behaved in a manner that I found was exactly the right level for us, and then everyone else who subsequently came in. I listened to his banter with other tables and was hugely impressed with his natural "larrikan" type manner with all.

The food was fabulous. It was average priced - my scotch fillet was $26.00 and came with pave, grilled tomato, fresh asparagus and broccolini. In hindsight, having seen Chris' chips which came with his Parmigiana, I wish I had ordered them but after last weeks meal, I wasn't going to fall into the "fried food" trap again.

I need to make mention here of my trusted mealmate, Chris. Poor long-suffering man has been dragged along to counter meals for 2 months in order to accomodate my desire to try and find Hobarts quintessential top pub meal venue! He has none of those marital obligations to do this for me, which just goes to show what a true friend he is. So - thanks Chris. I love you for sacrificing yourself for me!

Anyway - the Prince of Wales comes extremely highly recommended by Rita, and if I had been giving these places marks out of 10, I reckon POW would rate 9 1/2 on the rita-scale, but only because I think people need to strive for perfection.