Kings on Kings - with wings

this is a personal fav

located on king st just beneath Hotel CBD is the king's lounge. the room itself is clean and inviting although generally lacking in atmosphere and sparsely populated with business types filtering in from a long day's drudgery to kick back and push some buttons on a pokie machine for several hours... the up side is you can dine in relative privacy and they have some high quality food.

they specialise in chicken wings, honey soy, fried, peri peri all stacked in a 4 tier oven often party pies, quiches and sausage rolls occupying the lower rungs.

to the left of the oven are the mixed nuts and wasabi peas, to the right tomato, bbq and sweet chilli sauces as well as cute little take away containers (a nice and thoughtful touch). at each machine are generous bowls of lollies (fantails, minties,
mentos and sherbies) and at the hostess' counter there are more lollies and large smartie cookies (which i havent yet dared to try myself).

the quality of the hot food is high. the wings are well cooked and tend not to have dried out even at the later stages of the evening. the peri peri wings are spicy and succulent, the honey soy is nice as well and the deep fried wings could match anything you'd find at KFC.. the party quiches and sausage rolls on the other hand are a bit plain and the meat pies have this strange soft stringy meat like they have been filled with some kind of cat food.

overall it may not be the healthiest meal but a meal nonetheless..
and if you need to run you can always fill a takeaway container on the way out!

charlie chans - fishcakestick

this is one of those club vip rooms as opposed to pub vip rooms which usually means it is more upmarket and may mean it has better food or may mean it has no food at all... sadly charlie chans had neither. it had fishcakesticks.

fishcakesticks are what happens when a fish is minced into some kind of cake-like patty, then fried and stuck on a stick.

it was a decent snack and the stick meant you could cover the entire circumference in sweet chilli without getting your fingers sticky, so that's a win. aside from that it was hardly a meal and the only other food they offered were mint mentos and tiny cupcakes that were too sweet and definitely got your fingers sticky. as a dining experience i would not recommend.

lastly they did have the first automated cash out machine ive seen which means you dont have to do a human interaction to retrieve your money and particularly makes the 2 cent method mentioned on the home page much more viable.

Palace Hotel - they had real food!

i was stumbling home from a disappointing night out and decided to cut through Thai town to the late bus. out of the dark back streets loomed a red neon dragon with chinese writing and and arrow saying VIP.

i went in.

it was dark and at first disappointing. the hostess seemed bored and after a quick walk through i didnt even find basic level snacks (no lollies or nuts) and suspected the dragon wasn't guarding anything..

how wrong i was.

i spotted on the far table a bottle of chilli sauce. on closer inspection i found plastic containers, soy sauce, cutlery, mugs, tea and finally a small steamer.

of course i didnt dare draw any nearer under the watchful gaze of the hostess..

i perched myself at a pokie machine and began the 100 hits method (described on the home page). once i had established my presence i finally ventured back out to the steamer and opened it.

it contained BBQ pork buns and chicken dim sum.

a boon, the perfect food to keep fresh and edible for extended periods!..

...well the bun was a bit gooey and the dim sums a bit crusty, but they were both extremely edible doused in chilli sauce AND i can confirm that i have had no stomach issues almost 12 hours since.

Star hotel - hand-made sandwiches, full-length sausage rolls

a run down dingy pub in the heart of china town. tables covered with sticky dry beer and walls with TVs showing every conceivable outlet for gambling: sports, horse racing, dog racing, chariot racing, computerised racing, keno and more and in the next room are the pokies.. this is truly a pub for gamblers...

but that's not what we're interested in.

at the bar is a help yourself mixed nut and wasabi pea dispenser. the mix sports a good variety including coated peanuts, rice crackers and soy chips. the requisite lolly mix in the VIP room is also up to standard including sherbies, milk duds, mentos and (the somewhat divisive) minties.

not a bad start but really these are the minimum we are to expect from our VIP cuisine.

what really sets this one apart are the hand-made sandwiches and the full-length sausage rolls.

the full-length sausage rolls which aren't cut up into party sized bits and still in their original packaging, are kept in an oven behind the bar with party pies as well. to access them you indeed will need to do a human interaction with the bar staff.

in the VIP room on the ledge facing the bar are a number of lollies, packaged buiscits and also hand-made sandwiches! usually some combination of ham, cheese and tomato, and sure the cheese is that plasticy radiation resitant kind, and sure it's only white bread and the tomato has made it all soggy from sitting out for several hours.. but still that is pretty damn close to what real meal might look like!..




4 stars!

AB Hotel - they didnt even have chicken nuggets

THEY DIDNT EVEN HAVE CHICKEN NUGGETS!!!!!

i made a significant alteration to my route home from work to go past the vip room in the AB Hotel and they didnt even have chicken nuggets. they didnt have anything.

i saw chicken nuggets there weeks earlier when i was passing by, communal nuggets, on a big plate with a communal dipping bowl of tomato sauce.. i know, who even eats chicken nuggets with tomato sauce (my housemate, she's weird.) and who wants to eat them like that where everyone can finger them and double dip and they'd probably been sitting all day and were probably cold.

yet still in spite of all that i decided to get the nuggets, i made plans and dealt with all the attendant self loathing and social humiliation on the walk there. i dealt with it and there were none. i am owed nuggets.

ZERO STARS!