Fox Hotel

jedro — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:36:34 +0000

Inspired by a review by Fitzroyalty, we decided to try the Fox Hotel (351 Wellington St, Collingwood) for dinner. It’s located on the corner of Alexandra Parade, and we’d passed it many times without thinking much of it as it looks fairly nondescript.

Once you get inside and see the huge collection of beer cans, it’s apparent that it’s not just a run-of-the-mill pub. There’s a large selection of bottled beers, as well as some non-standard beers on tap, including one of my favourite wheat beers, Erdinger.

It was food we primarily came here for though, and the menu provided a number of tempting choices. My girlfriend ordered the gnocchi with wagyu ragu, which was a mixed bag. The ragu was fantastic, with tender chunks of beef bathed in a wonderfully rich tomato sauce. Not so good was the gnocchi, which rather stodgy.

I played it safe and ordered a parma, which was both generously proportioned, and well cooked. The chicken was moist, and the parma elements – cheese, napoli and proscuitto – were balanced. Still, it was just a parma, and next time I’ll try something a bit more interesting from the rather lengthy and wide ranging menu.

Grace Darling Hotel

jedro — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:44:30 +0000

The Grace Darling, not to be confused with the Grey Starling, has served up pretty good pub grub for some time. It’s only recently however, with some new faces behind the scenes, that the quality of the food has translated into bums on seats.
The hipster crowd has flocked to it, like seagulls to a hot chip. On the Saturday night that we visited, it was particularly noisy, even for a pub.
I order the seared yellowfin tuna with anchoiade (caper, mustard sauce) and baby potatoes, which also arrived with a nice unadvertised addition of asparagus. A generous slab of fish was cooked to perfection, coloured on the outside, and nice and pink in the centre. The not-too-salty anchioade was a perfect complement, and butter potatoes provided some welcome carbs. Fantastic.
My girlfriend, who is a fairly harsh critic when it comes to meat dishes, ordered the burger, and could barely stop talking about how good it was for the next hour. Most dishes sit around the $20 mark, which is very reasonably for food of this quality.
Drinks aren’t quite so cheap, with the good range of beers let down a bit by some fairly hefty pricing. That’s a minor issue though, for the Grace Darling has gone from good to very good.

hookturns.com » Pub

Fox Hotel

Grace Darling Hotel