Sharp counter meals, maverick art: how this corner pub was given The Royal treatment
Built in 1882, this inner-city landmark offers insights into (West) Aussie pub culture circa 2025 and beyond.
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14/20How we score
To anyone who clicked straight through to this week's review after reading the headline above and decoding my not-so-cryptic clue, congratulations. As a prize, you get to go home five minutes early.
Hopefully, that's enough of a head start to get to The Royal Hotel – the CBD one, not the East Perth one – in time to take advantage of the happy hour beer special being offered daily between 4pm and 5pm.
But if the thought of pints for a tenner triggered some sort of Pavlovian response to shake the person next to you or bombard WhatsApp group chats in excitement, don't feel bad. At a time where risings costs are shaping more of our choices, excitement about low-cost lager is understandable.
Especially when said blanket pricing applies to all six of the beers on tap, from the workhorse Swanny D and guest craft beers to Guinness. If The Royal isn't home to Perth's cheapest (happy hour) pint of the black stuff, it'd have to be one of the title's more serious contenders: at least as far as grand, lovingly restored CBD hotels go, anyway.
Despite The Royal's distinguished history, I knew it largely as a rickety shell on Wellington Street that's housed a barber, backpackers and squatters. Then in mid-2018, John Parker of The Parker Group (The Standard, Busselton Pavilion) took it over and spent 18 months and $13 million dollars helping the 140-year-old building rediscover its Gold Rush-era swagger.
Specialist leadlight glass repairers were called in. Subversive art was bought and hung. The first-floor balcony overlooking Yagan Square and William Street was carefully restored and now seats 200 of the 725 guests that this two-storey pub can accommodate. For anyone who gets energised by noise, chaos and a crowd, this is the landmark for you.
This scale and scope also influence the pub's cooking. While the ground floor is home to the calorific Detroit-style pizza of Willi's Pizza Bar and suave new-age bistro Fleur, the main bar upstairs keeps things familiar via a roll call of pub hits that everyone knows the words to, supplemented by some modern Australian cornerstones.
Beer-battered snapper is meaty of flesh and crunchy of armour, the accompanying tartare sauce providing cut-through. On Wednesdays – the pub rotates through daily food specials – $30 gets you juicy scotch fillet accessorised with garlic butter, salad and chips that are pale of hue, chunky of cut and closer in DNA to British chippies than crisp American-style fries. In a cute twist, the house burger has been dubbed The Royale. (Enter stage right, Pulp Fiction references.) It's been years since I've eaten a Quarter Pounder, but I'm certain that the clown's burgers weren't succulent smash patty-style joys like this.
Just as finding skin-contact vermentino on the wine list is a welcome surprise, so too is discovering that jazzing up ceviche with chilli flakes and a glossy avocado mousse can help offset kingfish fatigue. Hot chicken wings are prepared Korean-style and golden-fried, then doused in a chilli sauce with fermented bite. Twists of casarecce pasta in a comforting sugo alla vodka are a nod to American red sauce deliciousness.
It's not all smooth sailing, however. The golden, thinly pounded pork schnitzel tastes wanting as is, but finds it voice when slicked with the dense brown butter and caper gravy it's served with. Impotent chilli squid yearns for crunch. Sticks of broccolini in an otherwise fine Arabic hummus and zaatar arrangement weren't grilled as promised, but blanched, limp and unloved.
As is often the case with big operations, consistency can be an issue, not just with cooking, but also with front-of-house. Large spaces need large floor teams: the crew here ranges from disinterested bartenders to engaged, earpiece-equipped hosts eager to help. And just like other high-volume venues, The Royal lets you order and pay via QR codes with varying degrees of success. (Pro: not having to leave the table or conversation to get more pinot! Con: entrees and mains all arriving at once!) It's still early days for the technology, but I can't help but wonder what effect reducing human interactions will have on service standards.
But enough of the future, let's focus on the now. And the fact that The Royal is a very likeable ode to pub culture and proof of the power of self-belief. It's a beautiful space to be in, and its price point is accessible to many, especially if you time your visit right and order smartly. A primetime address near a major intersection and train station makes it ideal for after-work drinks, dates, work lunches and, vitally, people-watching and people-meeting.
Public houses don't work without a public. And over the last three months, I've met members of the public here that have challenged me, surprised me and even taught me. The bubbly Canadian from the same province as my late aunt. The wiry, serious-looking bloke who, unprompted, put out his ciggy and apologised for lighting up upwind from our table because he didn't see us. The lady with pink-tinted hair in a wheelchair who snuck onto the balcony for a quick suck on her vape. We swapped small talk about The Royal's accessibility (good) before she wheeled herself back inside.
'It's not bad for an old hotel,' she smiled. I smiled back in agreeance.
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