The Civic Hotel

[this picture is representation of the cheese laden pizzas served at the Civic Hotel]

There was much trepidation about our visit to the Civic Hotel. We had never been there, always assuming it was full of chicks with tattoos and men wearing VB singlets. Turns out we were about spot on. Well, that’s a bit harsh, as the Civic is a good pub, potentially a great pub, but there are a few issues it needs to sort out.

First, let’s discuss the good bits. It won’t take long. The Civic Hotel is huge, it has several cavernous rooms and heaps to do – play pool, watch TV, play video games (more on that later) and best of all, listen to some great live music in the beer garden. The music was great – it was a hot night and sitting outside watching Nathan Gaunt play acoustic guitar among the flame trees out the front was excellent. Top marks for the set up too, there was a lot of room to move, heaps of seating and a nice relaxed vibe.

As we mentioned before, there are video games to play, and the one that really grabbed the Beaufort Street Bloggers and their special guests was a game called ‘Deer Hunter’. As you may have guessed, it involves shooting deer. But you don’t shoot the female deer, so really, it’s not so violent and actually quite chivalrous. Deer Hunter entertained us for some time.

So, now the bad bits. The menu is very limited – and admittedly it was never meant to be a dinner menu – we could tell by the way it was entitled ‘bar snacks’. So, the bar snacks menu consisted of chips, fish and chips (which we had already seen on another table looking decidedly average) and a selection of ‘gourmet’ pizzas. Labelling them gourmet was an absolute nonsense. We ordered 4 large pizzas between 6 people, which we would normally polish off with ease. This time however, we probably left close to 2 pizzas worth of scraps.

The pizzas we chose were the New Yorker, the chicken and bacon, the Thai chicken and the meatball. When they were brought out it seemed as though we had ordered four of the exact same pizza, being ‘cheese’ flavoured pizza. The amount of cheese was unbelievable. It was stacked 6 cm high. It was dripping off the side of the pizzas. It stretched the distance of the table when someone tried to take a slice. It was disgusting. The bases were just as bad – you cannot hide a McCain’s frozen pizza base no matter how much cheese you put on top of it. They were flavourless, soggy and just plain wrong. The toppings were so covered in cheese we couldn’t comment on them, and there’s a good chance there were actually no toppings at all hidden among all that fromage.

The service was not exceptional either. Despite buying about 5 jugs of beer, 2 bottles of wine and 4 pizzas, when the designated driver who is clearly pregnant asked for a jug of water, it was delivered with maximum of fuss and eye rolling. It’s not like the place was jam packed either.

So, as a pub, it’s pretty good, but never, ever eat there.

In summary:

Service: Not very friendly. Not too speedy either.

Food: Deplorable.

Ambience: Relaxed, comfortable, generally very good.

Highlight: Deer Hunter

Lowlight: Never being able to eat cheese again.

Rating: 1 piece of soggy pizza base out of 5 (bearing in mind this is really a review of the food, not the pub)

Will we be back? definitely for quiet Sunday afternoon drinks.

Details: we couldn’t find a website, but you can call them on 08 9272 1011. We don’t know why you’d ever need to call though, we would be surprised if you were able to make a reservation.

Coming up: Next week we will be doing things a little differently, and will try some Charco’s chicken for takeaway.