The Chamberlain
A gastropub for all with deep-fried everything.
Overview
120 Quay Street has always been and evidently will always be, the hotspot in town — or at least, will hold a soft spot in my own heart. Back when I was a young lass, I'd queue up on a Saturday night to drop it low (influenced by the likes of Geordie Shore, the basic jist of epic club-dancing was 'the lower, the better' — my knees can't handle near-skimming the edge of my butt to sticky Redbull-dribbled floors nowadays) to some gangsta hip hop. And of course, have one eye open for the tall hotties like those red laser beams continuously scanning for perpetrators, all while rapping to A$AP Rocky. Once again, proving that women can multi-task. Due to these ever so lovely nostalgic moments of my embarrassing youth, TSG will always and forever be the 'cool club' past its death.
The good news for me and perhaps most of you is that it was reincarnated in sync with my maturity levels. From "Can I please have two cranberry vodkas with lime" to "Just two flights of beer thanks," The Chamberlain fulfills my new needs in every way. Well, not in every way, but it sure does satisfy my palate and cravings for deep-fried everything.
To celebrate another year of surviving this horrid world aka birthday of my boyfriend/partner, there was no better way to do it than an intimate meal of miscellaneous food from a fryer or grill and ten beers off the blackboard. Now that, is what I call a good dinner. Obviously, this hedonistic meal was balanced out with Omega-3 capsules when we arrived back home.
We ordered jerk chicken ($13), Chamber snags with kraut and mustard ($14), curry-roasted cauliflower with black garlic labneh and almonds ($16), pickles ($9), deep-fried pies ($11) and two flights of beer ($25 each). All of the above was pretty decent. Just a very important side note: if you're envisioning whole pies with pastry-and-all that are deep fried and thinking, that's not the case — they're more like miniature toppers. The filling changes daily according to the chef's whim. Sam was lucky enough to get his favourite childhood snack of mac 'n' cheese as the filling, only this time, they were coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried.
I definitely recommend attending this establishment with a fellow beer lover and an empty stomach. Go hard on a full jerk chicken ($24), the house-made snags, pickles and grab a flight each to taste everything from the weekly tap takeover. From pilsners, lagers, XPAs, IPAs, pale ales and stouts, there's a brew for every bro and a hop for every hoe lady.
Image: Logan West