Dining at the Welcome Hotel

Had dinner at the Welcome last week - hadn't been there for some time, and we felt like a night out.

The Welcome has a proper dining room, unlike some pubs where you just eat in the bar area. Not many people were having a feed - the dining room had maybe a dozen tables and we were the only ones there until near the end of the meal.

We don't have the luxury of eating long, lazy meals anymore. Little Monkey will sit around reasonably quietly for about 10 minutes and that's it. As soon as we got there, we let him go and he wandered around the restaurant until the food arrived re-arranging chairs, playing with the power points and generally trying to pull glasses, plates and cuttlery onto the floor.

The Welcome has quite a good menu, with just enough dishes to choose from. They'd don't smother you with choice. I didn't bother looking at the wine list as we were both off the juice. What I should have done was eat 2 or 3 entrees instead of just having a main. The entrees looked really good on paper, and my main turned out to be annoying.

One bad thing was that our food seemed to take forever to arrive. I went for a veal cutlet, which was a good sized, done rare but served on a bed of awful vegies. I think it was a bed of celery and leek, and I just hate celery. I don't mind leek, but it was undercooked and tough and stringy. The meat was good though. I asked for a side order of chips, and they were the crappiest chips that I have had in a while. No salt, not fried - I think they were oven baked, and they were both soggy and flavourless. Don't go the chips.

J had a chicken ballantyne, which is some sort of boned out piece of chook that has been stuffed with something. I'm not sure what it was stuffed with, but I didn't particularly like it. It was served with some sort of gnocchi, which I tried and almost spat out. It was dreadful. I think it was stuffed with sage, which I love with pork, but it seemed to be about 70% sage and 30% gnocchi and you have to tread lightly with sage.

Big thumbs down.

To cap it off, the chook did not agree with J, and we had to pay and bolt and then pray that she didn't have a chuck in the car on the way home. It was that bad.

Which is a shame, as J knows the owner and the Welcome is normally very good. It hasn't put me off the place, as it has so much potential. Next time we go there, I am just going to order entrees until I have had enough.

As far as price goes, it is a bit expensive. Our mains were $27 each, and the totally crap chips were $7.50, which is one of the most awful rip-offs that I have ever seen. For $7.50, we could have gone to Lashings and got a great big burger with everything and chips on the side, and Lashings makes great chips, smothered in chicken salt.

So that was the Welcome. I wonder how long it will be before I can face it again?