Golden Barley Hotel - Enmore

Nice looking retro exterior and good place to grab a drink and watch the footy. Golden barley hotel sounds pretty cool wonder where they got the name from?

The Golden Barley is a nice little pub Ive stumbled across when WJ was a little too full. They have a great outdoor patio area adjacent to the bistro you can ease into for a few hours with friends. A great hideaway when needing to escape King St. Price point is a little disappointing in the bistro as the food is just ok, with average size serves. Otherwise a good spot for a refreshment. crumbs-au.com

If you are looking for a place open for lunch/dinner on the 1st of January, look no further! Decent food too - we are having a chicken burger and rump stake as featured in the photo

Overall a good meal, but far from perfect. The Golden Barley, a classic Art Deco pub on Edgware Road, has an airy, contemporary restaurant out back and a decent menu with a few surprises in it. Notably it doesn't serve sausages and mash - they've bypassed the classic opt-out dish for the unadventurous to make people try new things. They have a smoker they use for occasional specials (swordfish when we were there) and some good variations on standard pub fare, like the jerk chicken burger (although why serve it with mayonnaise?). A group of us ate there at the weekend, on a particularly busy day where the staff in the kitchen were being pushed to the limit. Service wasn't as smooth as usual, but nor was it disastrous. I had one of the specials, the Sri Lankan fish curry - pink flesh, tiger prawn, mussels in a coconut-base sauce served on jasmine rice. It was very tasty and well-cooked, but seemed a short portion for the price (all the specials are in the $23-26 range). We also ordered lamb shank in sweet potato purée with lentils - which looked and tasted great - as did the chicken confit on celeriac purée with puy lentils and smoked spec. These three were the best dishes by far. Of the others, the chicken wings were served with a gruel-like thin, almost tasteless ranch sauce that did absolutely nothing. The 300gm grain-fed rump steak (fine) came with a watery pepper sauce, some rocket and a literal handful of fries. The children's version of the same dish was incredibly chewy and poor quality, with a scattering of chips. The last dish, the herb-crusted chicken schnitzel, was tasty but average, balanced on a thin portion of fries and some rocket. Their specials were good but they need to take a fresh look at some of their staples, which were decidedly average.

Overall a good meal, but far from perfect. The Golden Barley, a classic Art Deco pub on Edgware Road, has an airy, contemporary restaurant out back and a decent menu with a few surprises in it. Notably it doesn't serve sausages and mash - they've bypassed the classic opt-out dish for the unadventurous to make people try new things. They have a smoker they use for occasional specials (swordfish when we were there) and some good variations on standard pub fare, like the jerk chicken burger (although why serve it with mayonnaise?). A group of us ate there at the weekend, on a particularly busy day where the staff in the kitchen were being pushed to the limit. Service wasn't as smooth as usual, but nor was it disastrous. I had one of the specials, the Sri Lankan fish curry - pink flesh, tiger prawn, mussels in a coconut-base sauce served on jasmine rice. It was very tasty and well-cooked, but seemed a short portion for the price (all the specials are in the $23-26... read more