Gilhooleys in the Brisbane CBD is a pretty memorable place for me. When I first started coming up to Brisbane in 2005 we went there a lot. Many fun nights drinking and hanging out with friends, seeing the Irish dancers come out at whatever time of the night they did and do their jig, all with the backdrop of friendly CBD night time atmosphere.
Now that I've been living here for over 8 years, I still like to get to Gilhooleys and today Mrs Mega-Parm and I went for a nice Sunday lunch. As with most places I drag Mrs Mega-Parm to, they do a chicken parma.
We got there about 1:00pm and the place was pretty quiet. I like the atmosphere in there but when questioned why, I couldn't really answer it. The place feels homely and quaint, and there's no poker machines, which is quite strange in this day and age. Meals are paid for at the counter (which I love) and about 20 minutes after ordering our food arrived at our table.
How was it though? Picture below.
Chicken Parm with half a pint of Guinness
For $17.90 it's a good value parm. Something you could sink your teeth into after a long days work (and just before a long drinking session).
Size: Quick large piece of chicken, both in area and depth. A fair bit of the chickens thickness came from the crumbing but the chicken itself was also fairly thick. A large salad, shame there wasn't too many chips there thought.
Chicken: Cooked well, juice and succulent. The crumbing was pretty boring and a little soggy on the underside though.
Sauce: Tasted a bit like tomato paste, the kind of stuff you make homemade pizza with when you're not using fancy stuff. There was a good amount of it though and it did work pretty well with the rest of the meal.
Ham: Just one large piece of ham in between the sauce and the cheese. Usually when they do this the ham slides around on the sauce but not here, it stayed in place. Nice ham too, could have done with another layer, or a bit more ham and cut up.
Cheese: Lots of cheese, was melting over the edge of the schnitzel. Could have used just a fraction longer under the grill to give us a bit of a crispy outer later. Can't fault its flavour though, worked well with the ham and sauce.
Chips: Nice pubs chips. Needed a bit of salt or sauce (they supplied the sauce on the plate). Cooked well though could have done with a few more chips.
Salad: Leafy salad with a tasty balsamic type dressing. Most of it was stolen by Mrs Mega-Parm though.
Close up of the half eaten parma
All in all the meal was good. At the end I had polished off everything on the plate and was extremely full. The service was great and our meal was fairly inexpensive. There's also something to be said about Guiness in an Irish pub too, it just tastes better.
-Dave the Mega-Parm
