Last night my beloved wife and I decided to have some dinner with MotoPG Podcast Faktori racer, Parkes & Wildlife and his delightful wife, Emma. No biggie, just a catch-up, a meal, some laughs, you know, normal stuff.
I got to pick the venue, and because I am an idiot, and I should have known better, I picked the Huntlee Tavern in North Rothbury. I could have picked any of the six pubs, or three clubs in Singleton – all of which are pretty good in terms of food and service, or even gone to the Royal & Federal in nearby Branxton because it’s tucker is rather good, too.
But no. Like an idiot I figured we’d try the Huntlee Tavern on a Saturday night because, like an idiot, I hoped this vast new Temple d’Piss may have improved from the last time I went there to eat about a year ago.
I was wrong. If anything, it had simply gotten worse. Yes, it was all still shiny and sparkly, because that is what attracts clientele. And it sure does have a flash website because on-line marketing is crucial, but it’s all hat and no cattle as they say in the bush.
This wretched boghole also styles itself as an award-winning “gastropub” – whatever the fuck that is meant to mean in whatever brain-sick marketing-spiv lingo some fetid cock-holster came up with.
Sure, it has indeed won awards. Like, in 2024 it won Best Casual Dining Regional NSW at that year’s Australian Hotels Association (AHA) Awards. That entitles this soulless piss-den to hang banners on its fence and plaques on its wall proclaiming this honour. How this win was possible is not much of a mystery. It’s just an AHA marketing gimmick for its members. I am fairly certain not a single independent judge of cuisine or hospitality was consulted during the awards process.
And there’s a trend here.
The Huntlee Tavern is one of the latest in this new wave of uber-pubs that are springing up in high-growth areas and new housing estates. North Rothbury is one of those. It used to be a paddock attached to Rothbury (itself an older housing development), but is now a sea of photo-copied houses with tiny backyards – think “little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky-tacky…”. Across the street from all the new houses is the now usual gronk-fest of Maccas, KFC, 7-11, Oporto, BWS, Coles, Supercheap Autos, and so on. You get the idea. These types of new suburbs and their attendant strip-malls are everywhere and expanding.
Anyway, one of the first things built in this new growth area was this Huntlee Tavern. Very shiny it was, too. Big and modern, and utterly and irredeemably soul-less. Australia once had a great and honest pub culture – and in some places you can still find the odd beaut pub – Singo actually has a few. But they will all eventually be gone and are steadily being replaced by these shiny pokie-funded sparkle-barns that churn out shit food, backed up by service so crap you have to wonder if anyone explained to the staff what the word “Hospitality” means.
This was my experience…
I called on Wednesday to make a booking for Saturday night. I got an AI female voice. I made the booking after repeating myself over and over to the computer that struggled to understand my perfectly enunciated English. So that was sorted.
My wife and I arrived ten minutes early to a venue already packed with people. A woman I assumed was staff approached me as I stood near the kitchen and waited for my wife to return from the toilet.
“You right there?” she said.
I guess that whole “Hello, sir, may I help you?” shit is not a thing in gastropubs.
“I had a reservation for six pm.”
“Your name?”
I told her my name. Then I spelled it for her. Slowly. I stopped every three letters and waited for her to either take notes or find it on her system. She asked me to repeat it. I repeated it.
“I can’t find it,” she told me, after poking her keyboard for several minutes. “Did you get a confirmation?”
“No,” I said. I could have spelt it again for her, but I didn’t see much point in that. She hears the first three letters then the light in her eyes goes blank.
“When did you make the booking?” she asked.
“Wednesday,” I said, and showed her my phone that had the Huntlee’s phone number and record of the call that night. She looked at that and then went back to her computer. My wife arrived.
“Can’t they find the booking?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” I shrugged.
The woman ignored us and poked her keyboard some more. Then she said: “It’s not a problem. I can fit you in.” And then she led us to a tall table with stools.
Meh, I thought. Shit happens. I’m gonna have a good night anyway.
So, I go to the bar to order drinks. I stand there for a bit. They’re not overly busy, and there’s a bunch of staff behind the bar doing bar stuff, like stacking glasses into fridges or washers, and rushing to and fro. A few more people line up to order drinks. I got the impression the staff wait for a critical mass of people to appear before they serve them. Like traffic lights that wait for a certain amount of cars before changing.
I could see a young, pot-bellied this-is-my-first-beard-and-man-bun mutt, a lard-bummed uber-she with a trout-pout and whore make-up, and some vacuous skinny blonde who looked like something terrible had happened to her in the cool-room. None of them looked remotely interested in customers until critical mass was achieved.
The tubby, bearded boy-gronk with the man-bun eventually bellied up opposite me. He had to. You just can’t ignore a customer for all that long. He radiated shittiness. It was coming off him in waves.
“What’re you after?” he grunted.
Because it was a pub, and I have worked in pubs, I would have started with: “Hi, mate. What would you like to drink?” Had it been a more upmarket venue (and I have worked in those as well), like this crud-pit styled itself as, I would have opened with: “Good evening, sir. How may I help you?”
But fat child-Ragnar here just wanted to know what I was after.
“Your pretend-viking head on a stake,” I felt like saying, but ordered a vodka and soda and a beer, and pulled my card out so he could see it.
“Cash or card?” he said, looking past the card and me to somewhere over my head.
Of course, card transactions come with a surcharge, because they sure as fuck aren’t making enough money out of the over-priced piss they’re serving. How did I know this? By looking at the Eftpos machine. It had a different price to the one he’d stated. Was there a sign saying card transactions will incur a surcharge? Not that I could see.
I took the drink back to the table. Parkes & Gardens and Emma arrived, and we perused the menus. Well, I did spend some time glaring at fatboy-Ragnar, but Lynette told me to breathe and relax and order my food, which always makes me feel better.
The food was outrageously priced. Like, seriously. And there were two scales of pricing. Locals pricing and Guests pricing. Like an RSL club. I lived down the road in Singo, so I may well have been a local, and was going to ask for that price, but then I saw you had to join their mailing list in order to qualify for a few bucks off the meals. Piss on that. Not having my inbox filled with endless piss-and-chips meal-deals is worth paying a few extra bucks for.
Lynette felt she would eat the Salmon and Haloumi salad ($28). I decided there may well be some kind of Asian in the kitchen, and that being the case, it was possible the Nasi Goreng ($29) might be edible. Parkes & Wildlife opted for a schnitty ($35) and Emma chose the lamb chops ($33).
I was briefly engaged by this on the menu:
CHARCUTERIE BOARD FOR 2 DF V VE
Rainbow Olives | Red Capsicum Tapenade | Beetroot & Feta Dip Hommus | Suppressa | Ham | Prosciutto | Turkish Bread | Charred Vegetables – $50
But any place that does not know the meaning of “charcuterie” (it actually means a delicatessen specialising in dressed meats and meat dishes) – and tries to pass off the above-listed dreck as that, while also being unable to spell “Hummus” or “Sopressa” is not selling that to me.
We ordered more drinks. The aforementioned skinny blonde girl served me this time, and asked me if I wanted a slice of lime in the vodka. I told her I very much would. She didn’t put it in. I asked that she do so. She looked upset as she plonked it in there. There were now four empty glasses on our table, and shortly thereafter another four, followed by another four. So 12 empty glasses.
Then our meals arrived. We moved the small army of glasses to one side. The people who’d brought our meals might have taken the glasses, but maybe they only serve meals. Removing glasses may have triggered a demarcation dispute.
“There’s no haloumi in this,” Lynette said, poking at her bowl.
I looked. “Maybe they’ve hidden it under those two big handfuls of rocket lettuce they’ve used to actually make the bowl look full. They sure as shit aren’t hidden under those four small slices of shitty-looking salmon.”
She dug around in the rocket lettuce, and discovered two halves of one cherry tomato hidden in the rocket jungle, but no haloumi cheese.
“I’m going to go get you some fucking haloumi,” I said.
“No, no,” my wife said. “It’s OK.”
She understood perfectly well I would have returned with the cheese, but there would also have been some security guards involved as well. And then we would have to leave, because those bitches always call the cops. I addressed my Nasi Goreng.
Which looked and subsequently very much like it had begun its life as a packet of flavoured rice from Aldi. There was an egg on it, but the rest looked and certainly tasted like a packet of microwaved rice. It was flavourless garbage.
All of us ate our food because we were hungry, but not one of commented on how yummy it was. It just wasn’t. It was mass-produced dross, pumped out of industrial kitchen that obviously strove for quantity over quality and taste. But certainly, with quality pricing.
I am happy to pay a high price for a meal. But that meal best be delicious, it best be served by a waiter, and it better have the ingredients it promises to have on the menu. None of that happened.
The place was now pretty full, and a band was setting up. It was maybe seven pm. My wife went to the toilet, and returned horrified.
“The toilet is flooded. There is vomit everywhere, and some sad bitch is heaving up her lungs in the cubicle next to mine. Then I saw her fingers come under the partition and she was asking I pass her the stubby holder that had rolled into my cubicle. As I was leaving, three other sluts piled into that cubicle where that moll was throwing up, and started screaming about racking up.”
“Were any of them wearing cowboy hats?” I asked.
“All of them,” Lynette answered.
“That’s the Hens Night that came in just after us. You remember I pointed them out to you.”
“Was that when you said: ‘Check out the fat rodeo sluts doing shots over there!’?”
“Them’s the ones,” I nodded.
Our half-empty plates remained on the table for the next half-hour, but a bloke did come and get the glasses. He did not take the plates, or even notice them, so I took it upon myself to move them to a nearby table that had a Reserved sign on it. The plates disappeared very soon afterwards. See? I know how this works.
I went to the toilet. I squelched through the dank water flowing freely from the adjoining Ladies facility, and addressed the porcelain piss-catcher. I felt a little out of place. The two blokes using the other troughs were all holding beer glasses, and taking sips as they pissed. This is perfectly normal at a campfire. But this was 7.30pm, in a flash “gastropub, and the band had not even started. If you’re the kind of heinous pisshead that has to take his beer into the shitter with you, then I’d suggest you have a problem.
“We should go,” Lynette said when I returned. “That band is going to start soon.”
“Oh come on, “I grinned. “I can’t wait to start belting out Chisel covers and glassing all these tattooed fuckers when they get the words wrong.”
“You’re far too old for that shit anymore,” she observed.
I hate it when she’s vaguely right.
Anyway, fuck you, Huntlee Tavern. You’re just shit. I ain’t ever going back. Your food sucks, and your service sucks. But you won’t go broke, because you’re the only game in town. And you’re the only game in town because that’s the way it was planned and that’s the way shit rolls in Australia. Heaven forfend someone should open a competing establishment across the street, huh?
