Five dollar parmas y'all!
Get on it! For the past couple of months my inner-west facebook group has been all abuzz about this seemingly impossible deal at the Commercial Hotel. Five dollar chicken parmas with chips and salad on Th, Fr, Sa nights. Could it be true? Rumour had it the food was actually good, if not the five star dining experience you'd experience at the Station Hotel up the road. Despite living in the hood for five years I'd never even seen the "Mersh" before, or at least never noticed it. Last week we finally decided to check out the "deal of the century": Hidden on sparse industrial corner adjacent to a gravel lot, the Commercial Hotel looks a bit suspect of first glance....We wandered inside, through an ample, though empty beer garden to the blasting tunes of the Beach Boys. Inside, the space was darkly light, with a few tables packed with families at the unfashionably early hour of 6:30 PM. A range of crazy cheap drink specials (five dollar shots) told me we'd come to the right place. I ordered two parma specials, a pint of beer, and a lemon lime and bitters and it came to the astounding price of 18 dollars. Amazingly the portions were ample (if not as gargantuan as at some pubs) and the parmas and chips were pretty darn good. As I tucked in I said to my husband, "I am never paying 22 bucks for a parma again. Never". Pints were six bucks and my soda was a measly two. The Beach boys played and the local children ran about us in their socks, emitting the occasional screech. An empty dance floor sat adjacent awaiting the 19 year olds that would replace the families in a few hours, no doubt enjoying their five dollar shots.
It is a bit of a strange scene here: Pub on a desolate road, prices straight from 1990, family pub cum nightclub, but that's all ok. Two people can have a decent feed and drinks here for a twenty for goodness sake. read more