Had massive cravings for some pub grub and thought we would get out of our comfort zone and try a different pub that we haven’t been to before, instead of revisiting the same ones that we go to! Tower Hotel is a place that we drive past often, and have been meaning to try it since the revamp.
The night we visited, we were seated in the beer garden because the main restaurant was at capacity. We opted for Garlic Bread & Haloumi Fries w/ Aioli for starters and Slow Roasted Angus Porterhouse, the Warm Salmon Salad & a couple of beers to wash it down.
Service was subpar to begin with as we were served 1 beer out of the 2 with our entrees. However, having eaten the garlic bread and haloumi fries we decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.
How wrong we were, all that followed was disappointment… We waited a long, long time for our mains and still no second beer. When the mains finally arrived, we asked about the missing beer but staff were clueless and had to reconfirm our order with us. No cutlery was provided with our meals, so when I went up to the bar to ask for some, the waitress told me to “just grab whatever you want”, meaning I had to reach over the bar countertop to grab it…
The steak was cooked medium-rare as requested but it was extremely gristly and not great quality. The bread roll that accompanied the steak was stale and chips were undercooked - pretty sure we ate raw potato at some point. The warm salmon salad was no better. The salmon within the salad was cooked well, but it was drenched with dill aioli, making the dish super sickening - especially since the salad consisted of a handful of spinach, about 10 chickpeas, a whole lotta raw Spanish onion and no avocado?!
Realising the missing avocado (that was meant to be in it), I went up to the bar but nobody was there (waited around for 5 minutes). I then walked around the to main restaurant to ask about the missing avocado, only to be told: “it is diced up in there, you just can’t see it” and then they decided to generously give us more avocado - 1/4 of a blackened avocado. How generous.
$100 later and a whole lot of calories wasted on a horrible meal. Disappointing.