It's not all its hacked up to be
Friday 8th April 2011 - The Hackney Hotel
Well RPF is off and running with the first random pub visited was The Hackney.
After Amy (RPF Secretary) and myself (RPF CEO) wandered around for a few moments trying to find a table to sit at, the only place that was free was the smokers area out the front. This didn't bother us though as it was such an awesome night to be outside enjoying a beer.
First stop was the bar. To my horror the beer of choice (for myself) for the night "Super Dry" was $7.50 a pint. I was like WTF this is ridiculous! Everywhere else it is about $5.50. So I decided to go for a Heini which was $6.50, and it was well worth it because I refuse to drink "Extra Dry" which was a dollar cheaper but not worth the bad taste. I would like to thank the bar man for telling me the price guide first, otherwise it could have been an expensive night. (1 point to the Bar Staff).
Daniel (RPF Human Relations Consultant) and Emily (RPF General Cleaner) soon arrive and immediately get into the swing of it. Daniel went straight to the bar to get a Hieni and a wine and also order a bowl hot chips. Hmmm how interesting these chips would turn out to be...
Once the chips arrive and we start to devour them, we all look at each other and are like “these are stone cold and crap”. So Daniel, being the brave man that he is, jumps up and trudges off to the bar to complain about our cold snack, which most likely are to have sat in the kitchen for some time. Finally the new or probably re-heated chips arrive, and are quickly eaten by us. (-2 points for cold chips).
In the time for waiting for the chips and more RPF attendees, we had time to peruse the menu for the meal that was going to satisfy our growing hunger pains. Immediately the burgers were a topic of discussion. Do we all get one each or do we try something else?? It was a tough call...
Enter Mr RPF President aka Gobbo and Minnie (RPF First Lady) and Pearsy (RPF Title TBC) to the RPF table. After a quick check of the menu, it's off to the order our food. Unfortunately somebody thought that Pasta was part of the RPF rules, but as he is the President we thought we should let this slide on this occasion. However, if it happens again I fear a leadership challenge might be needed and some serious questions might be asked about his choice of pub meal.
We ended up ordering every burger on the menu, 3 beef, 1 chicken, 1 vego and one waygu steak. All of which get thumbs up (6 points to the burgers), oh and of course the President’s pasta marinara. Now I don’t like to use the word unfortunately to many times, but it's the only thing that can describe what happened to the CEO, Human Relations Consultant and Title TBC meals, which were all ordered at the same time as everyone's else’s, but took an extra 40 minutes to arrive from when everyone else got their main meal, and of course meant everyone else had finished (-3 points to the burgers).
NOT HAPPY about the wait we had, although they did give us a round of beers which kind of kept us a little happy but only made our hunger grow more (2 points for free beers). Thank god the burger was tasty and made up for the wait.
Fraser (RPF Phantom) and Ruben (RPF Random Bike Rider) stuck with the theme of randomness by making some quite bizarre entrances. Fraser appears like the ghost who walks and Ruben, after coping some serious questions from the RPF Human Relations Consultant about his were abouts, casually rides in from Malvern, like it’s just around the corner and all, to join the RPF festivities.
After a few more drinks and the departure of the President and First Lady, and some rather brash and quite bizarre bets made, that could scope the season of many teams and players and the hip pocket of a couple of individuals, it seemed that the first RPF was coming to a successful end. One question asked will still remain unanswered for some time "how many sauces are there?”.
The Hackney Hotel RPF rating 4/10