Hyde Park Hotel

Hello friends! I have decided to expand the reach of the rambling extrovert into... FOOD REVIEWS! Yes you heard me.

There's something called "Pub Crawl" which I have started going to. It involves people eating regular food and having fun. It's more of a "food crawl", but the food is at pubs.

My goals at "Pub Crawl" are similar to the ones of the writer of http://weeklypubcrawl.blogspot.com/ , and I will enumerate them below:

• Spend at least $25 (not including drinks)
• Not make myself sick by eating anything with vegetables in it
• Have a terrible evening

 I will score based on the following criteria:

• 1 point per menu item over $25 (max 6)
• -1 point per vegetable on my plate (max +3, min 0)
• Rating of how much I hated the meal (max 3)

 So, with the business out of the way, on to the review of the pub!
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Food Prices

Unfortunately, because this was my first pub crawl I had not yet realised I would suddenly grow to have a passion for food blogging; as a result, I'm not going to be able to rate this menu on the number of over $25 options. I know there were at least two or three; however I would like to point out that I don't particularly care for steak or seafood so spending over $25 while having a meal that I despise will not be so difficult so long as I order the prawns.

I ended up ordering, at the request of my beautiful and talented boyfriend N, a mole poblano pork belly for $26.50 - within my budget, fortunately! There was also a nice looking "asian taco" that reminded me of the iceberg stage of peking duck, but it was only $19.50 so was outside my budget.

EDIT: I actually found the menu after all, and it turns out they have 4 different items over $25 on the "steak and meat" menu, and the casserecce with prawns exceeds $25, and another 5 items (including two seafood) were also in that price range.

Food Quality

Unfortunately, the Pork Belly was really quite nice - it was on a bed of sweet potato (which I love), had red onion and lettuce. I've only had pork belly once before and that was at the famous Jackson's Restaurant, so I was not in much of a position to judge its quality but according to a fellow diner the pork belly was cooked well but did not have the crispy skin, which was comforting to know.  The balsamic was very nice as well, and there was this rather delicious spicy peanuty mexican sauce on the entire thing.

The number of vegetables on the plate (3) is already too much... but then you turn the plate around and you see this:

IT HAS SUNDRIED TOMATOES ON IT. That puts the number of vegetables up to 4 and would get negative marks if  that was possible!

All in all, I was very dissapointed to find the food delicious and fresh and well-cooked. The only saving grace of this meal was that the pork belly lacked the crispy skin.

Overall Rating

• 1 point per menu item over $25 (max 6) - 6! There were about 10 items that exceeded $25.
• -1 point per vegetable on my plate (max +3, min 0) - This gets a fat 0 because there were four vegetablse on my plate. The small amount of red onions was probably really only worth at -0.5, but that wouldn't make a difference.
• Rating of how much I hated the meal (max 3) - This would have gotten a dismal 0 if it weren't for the saving grace of the meal - the lack of crispiness in the pork belly. I'm going to be generous and give it a 1.  

Overall rating: 7/12 = 58%.

There were too many vegetables and it was far too delicious. Fortunately, the menu had many expensive items - including prawns, steak, and other foods I despise - so if I went again I might be able to choose something that would get a high score.