Hotel Clarendon

Hotel Clarendon
156 Devonshire St
Sydney NSW 2010
Ph: (02) 9699 6001

We weren’t meant to be at the Clarendon, but ended up there through a combination of factors mainly relating to parking issues. Parking problems? In Surry Hills? Perish the thought!

It was either the Shakespeare or here, and of the two, the Clarendon was much quieter, so inward ho we went.

This is the sort of local where you drop in at lunch or after work and hang out. The downstairs area is fairly generic, but renovated in the last couple of years to give it a more contemporary feel, with a spacious main bar area leading to a smaller area with a pool table which in turn opens out to a courtyard, the most attractive of options on a sunny day

The Clarendon’s bistro has a menu that covers standard pub grub, from pasta, burgers and steaks to pizzas and Chicken Parmigiana, but there’s also a kids’ menu. Amongst the items in their bistro menu are ten “all day specials” for $10 each, and we both ended up ordering items from the $10 section.

 

Beef burger - lettuce, tomato, caramelised onion, cheese and bbq sauce ($10)

My choice : Steak Sandwich - lettuce, tomato, caramelised onion, cheese and bbq sauce ($10).

The sandwich was a fairly routine affair, I don’t tend to expect all that much from a $10 pub steak sandwich, but this one was decently sized, the amount of filling good, and the chips were, oddly, probably one of the best things about it. It would definitely have been improved if the bread had been lightly toasted.

The burger was a success both size wise, and taste wise. The exterior of the patty was charred, the taste solidly orthodox. I think that I would have preferred the burger which, yes, I forgot to taste.

When you go to a local watering hole style pub, and this one has been around since 1876, you go in there knowing what to expect – decent filling fare for a reasonable price. Cheap and cheerful. This is what we got.

[AP]