And for mains...

So, post-Core Luxury Retreat, we went for lunch at the Mundaring Weir Hotel. Neither of us had been there before, and we are rarely in the area,so we thought we'd check it out.

The first trap for young players is trying to find the cafe where you need to order your food. There are flights of stairs, vast unused dining rooms and chairs, more stairs,no signage and you feel like you are on a journey to the centre of the earth.

I like a period piece as much as the next Jane Austen fan, but this was no setting for Mr Darcy. The place feels really cluttered, and quite unclean. We eventually found the cafe/coffee shop and ordered wine and meals. They did not provide a bucket for the bottle of wine which was already warmish, and when we finally found a place to sit, we discovered one of the glasses was dirty.

Wanting to leave the building behind, we headed outside, and started the process of trying to find a table. Think of it a bit like an orienteering course, roped off sections everywhere, grass littered with the product of dozens of duck bottoms, bases for umbrellas haphazardly strewn about the place. They give you a vibrating buzzer thingo to let you know when your food is ready, and you have to re-navigate it all to get back to the kitchen.

Mr K had the Fisherman's Feast, which I had been considering myself (sunny Sunday, bottle of wine, how could you not contemplate fish and chips?), but I was grateful I didn't. At $23.50 for a pub meal, you would expect some fresh fish of some description, and the prawns/scallops/other seafood to be presentable. The prawns clearly came out of a box, but the scallop (yes,1) was intriguing. Obviously breaded, but with the most amazing shape. This was a diamond cut scallop, an absolutely perfect cross section of a cylinder. Unless nature has started producing scallops to some sort of QA specification I am not familiar with, I think we can assume it was artificial and processed. The crab stick was well, a crab stick. I can (almost) understand a suburban fish and chip shop selling this type of atrocity, after all, if you don't want it, you don't have to order it. But for a pub to include it comes under the heading of self-harm. To cap it all off the chips were limp and less than plentiful.

I, however, changed my mind at the last minute and ordered a Chicken Bruschetta wood fired pizza ($16.50). This turned out to be a wise choice, the sauce was tasty, the chicken appeared fresh, and the crust was appropriately crispy.

Despite all of above, the sun was shining, I had just had a massage, I wasn't at work (always a key ingredient to success), and I was quite prepared to be magnanimous, especially as my pizza exceeded my expectations. But I couldn't relax. It was akin to attempting to nap in the middle of the David Jones After-Xmas sales in Sydney or Melbourne. It isn't going to happen, and if it does, you should probably see your Dr.

The setting here is quite good, they have a niche with the location and the heritage value of the building, it could and SHOULD be so much better! They don't need to serve wanky over-priced meals, but good pub grub, served in clean vessels, would be a great start. And clean the place up - it’s a broken leg (or worse) waiting to happen.

What do you think? Have you been here? Was it a bad day, or this situation normal?