Great Ocean Road Brewhouse — Restaurant in Apollo Bay

I stayed here for a total of 3 nights on my GOR adventure.||||The accommodation is fairly basic but you get what you pay for and I thought it was reasonably good value. The rectangular room was not very large but I had no intention of spending more time than I needed to in the room.||||The double bed was clean and comfy although it barely fit across the width of the room. I had to squeeze between it and the heater to get to the other side where there was a small side table with drawers and a window over looking the street and the rear of the old post office. There was a small sink with taps, good for brushing teeth, a rack for hanging clothes and low stand to set a suitcase on.||||Across the hallway there were male and female toilets and separate male and female bathrooms. The bathrooms even had a bath (well, the male bathroom, anyway, I didn't go into the female bathroom but I assume it was the same) as well as a shower. No sink though, hence the teeth brushing in the sink in the bedroom. At the end of the hall, towards the internal stairs, there was a unisex bathroom (and toilet, I think). I only gave it a glance as I used the facilities across the hall from my room.||||Residential guests accessed the rooms via a steel grate staircase at the back (due to covid protocols).||||The staff were friendly and kindly filled my thermos with hot water in the mornings before I set off on the day's adventures.||||On my second night there I was awoken at stupid o'clock by the window rattling. I'd seen the forecast and I thought it was the wind that was shaking the window frame. It's an old pub, once the Ballarat Hotel, probably around 120 years old, or more. It was a bit annoying but I managed to get back to sleep. Approximately 40 minutes later I was awoken by the rattling again. This time I couldn't get back to sleep which was far more annoying as there was very little I could do. It was pre-dawn and I didn't want to wake any of the other guests. And the Apollo Bay Bakery wouldn't be open for quite some time yet so I couldn't even go and get a coffee.||||A few hours later, as I was setting off for the day's adventuring, I caught a few minutes of radio from Melbourne. Turned out there had been a couple of small earthquakes in the early hours of the morning in the vicinity of Apollo Bay.||||Despite what people have said, it turns out that, in fact, I could not sleep through...

I stayed here for a total of 3 nights on my GOR adventure.||||The accommodation is fairly basic but you get what you pay for and I thought it was reasonably good value. The rectangular room was not very large but I had no intention of spending more time than I needed to in the room.||||The double bed was clean and comfy although it barely fit across the width of the room. I had to squeeze between it and the heater to get to the other side where there was a small side table with drawers and a window over looking the street and the rear of the old post office. There was a small sink with taps, good for brushing teeth, a rack for hanging clothes and low stand to set a suitcase on.||||Across the hallway there were male and female toilets and separate male and female bathrooms. The bathrooms even had a bath (well, the male bathroom, anyway, I didn't go into the female bathroom but I assume it was the same) as well as a shower. No sink though, hence the teeth brushing in the sink in the bedroom. At the end of the hall, towards the internal stairs, there was a unisex bathroom (and toilet, I think). I only gave it a glance as I used the facilities across the hall from my room.||||Residential guests accessed the rooms via a steel grate staircase at the back (due to covid protocols).||||The staff were friendly and kindly filled my thermos with hot water in the mornings before I set off on the day's adventures.||||On my second night there I was awoken at stupid o'clock by the window rattling. I'd seen the forecast and I thought it was the wind that was shaking the window frame. It's an old pub, once the Ballarat Hotel, probably around 120 years old, or more. It was a bit annoying but I managed to get back to sleep. Approximately 40 minutes later I was awoken by the rattling again. This time I couldn't get back to sleep which was far more annoying as there was very little I could do. It was pre-dawn and I didn't want to wake any of the other guests. And the Apollo Bay Bakery wouldn't be open for quite some time yet so I couldn't even go and get a coffee.||||A few hours later, as I was setting off for the day's adventuring, I caught a few minutes of radio from Melbourne. Turned out there had been a couple of small earthquakes in the early hours of the morning in the vicinity of Apollo Bay.||||Despite what people have said, it turns out that, in fact, I could not sleep through...

As a semi-frequent food reviewer, I've always been of the firm belief that the price of a dish should dictate the quality you're going to receive. If you're paying top dollar for a dish, you expect the quality of that dish and the ingredients used to be top notch.

So you can imagine my surprise when I paid $29 for a Chicken Parma that was layered with what appeared to be perfectly round supermarket ham, you know, the cheap stuff they sell at Coles, and then topped with a very stingy handful of cheese, to the point where not even the ham was fully covered, leaving a pretty well exposed chicken breast underneath.

$29, ladies and gentlemen.

I get that they're trying to cosplay as a trendy, upmarket boutique beer house, and the variety of beer they have on tap, as well as the price of said beer would definitely lead credence to that. But the fact that they're selling a Chicken Parmigiana for $29, and they're using the cheapest possible ham they can, with the smallest handful of cheese they could muster. This is clearly another one of those establishments that care more about profit than they do actual quality.

This is before we even talk about my partners dish, the Chicken and Chorizo Penne. $32 for a dish that ordinarily, anywhere else would cost less than $26. My partner attempted to order the penne pasta "half cooked", or al dente, and was assured by the waitress that it could be done, only to then be told that in this, again, $32 pasta dish, the pasta itself was pre-cooked in the morning and then heated up on demand. Again, $32.

The chicken was all right, but the chorizo was overcooked and rubbery. And while the pasta definitely wasn't soggy to the point of being unedible, it definitely wasn't the way we both would have preferred, again, in this $32 dish.

Don't get me wrong, if this dish was appropriately priced in the mid-20s, cook the pasta however you see fit. The price would be cheap enough to justify that. But when you're charging in excess of $30 for what is in reality a pretty basic pasta dish, I would expect that pasta to be able to be cooked how I personally preferred myself. The price point you have set, set a reasonably high level of expectation, a level of expectation that in this case just wasn't met, on either of the dishes we ordered, for...