To All My Friends — Restaurant in District of Belconnen

$20 for 4 chicken wings, $32 for a mediocre pizza and schooners starting at $11 is just too expensive.

Canberra has a lot of good options for pizza. Whether you’d like a something cheap or expensive there’s tons of options, the market is oversaturated with good pizza options. Generally, you’d see higher quality pizzas as you work your way up the price range. Some restaurants like Grease Monkey are able to sell a high quality pizza for $26, perhaps the best in Canberra. Unfortunately, “To All My Friends” does not rank competitively against any other pizza establishment in Canberra.

We ordered the supremo pizza, and found that there was almost no meat on the pizza. It was more just a cheese pizza with a lot of capsicum and mushrooms on it. It put a bad taste in my mouth seeing that “To All My Friends” is trying to maximise profits by minimising the quantity of quality ingredients on their pizzas. The taste and texture of the pizza was on par with Dominos. Dominos actually serves decent pizzas for $7. You’d expect to receive a higher quality pizza for $32, but unfortunately “To All My Friends” did not deliver on this expectation.

Similarly to pizza, Canberra has a lot of good options for chicken wings (see the “wingsofcanberra” Instagram page). “To All My Friends” southern fried wings were a bit too salty, but otherwise juicy and cooked perfectly. However, given the small portion size, the $20 price point is simply not competitive when comparing the wings here to other restaurants in Canberra. “The Duxton” in Turner has higher quality wings with nicer sauces on offer, and their portion sizes are significantly bigger. Best of all, wings at “The Duxton” are cheaper than “To All My Friends”.

Beer selection on tap was okay, but a majority of beers were very strong. You need to have lower ABV beers available to people who need to drive home afterwards.

We booked a table for trivia, and upon arriving we were told that we would be sitting outside, even though there were plenty of tables available inside. While there were heat lamps for the tables outside, these heat lamps were not inline with the tables, really not sure why that was the case.

Upon coming back to the table with a beer, my mate sat down and immediately spilled most of it when the table unexpectedly shifted. We told the wait staff who seemed already aware of the problem. If the wait staff are aware that the table can shift that much, why hasn’t it been fixed? The table shifted quite a bit for the rest of the night, and made the experience of eating my overpriced food and drinking my overpriced beer worse.

Thankfully the atmosphere was saved by the quality of trivia that was hosted, the trivia was pretty great. There’s basically no phone reception where the restaurant is, but thankfully the restaurant provides wifi for customers.

Don’t waste your time coming here, there’s so many better options in Canberra you should...

First of all, the staff were friendly and accommodating and the facilities were clean and tidy. Their products are fairly priced and there is a fair variety. Accessing the venue is easy as it is across the street from a bus stop and the area is pretty well let at night.

Here's where I made a mistake. Despite Google categorizing this as a bar, and the venue seating maybe 30 max there were at least 6 children under the age of about 8 for the majority of the two hours I was there tonight. On any given day I can't go out in public and avoid children having meltdowns, running around unattended, and generally consuming the atmosphere around them. Admittedly I caught the bus this morning and there was a toddler being extremely chirpy and restless for the whole journey, as other passengers noticed, so I'm coming in on this situation hot. I realize now that a venue named "To All My Friends", in a small shopping center in a suburban setting may encourage locals, friends and family to visit. If you're an adult seeking a bar that doesn't appreciate a potentially "family friendly" vibe you could liken to McDonald's on a Saturday morning following a kids sports games, then you might want to want to try somewhere else. If you like kids no problem but I can only handle so much of them for so long. I feel the same way about kids as I do about dogs, the well behaved and quiet ones are great. Anyway to be fair I think the staff seemed accommodating of the children, sometimes stepping around them as they waited plates of food to tables, and that's great for parents. They also had at least one high chair on hand for a baby that was there or maybe the parents brought it, I'm not sure.

I can appreciate there is a vibe to my review that suggests "If you're this easily irritable to this extent, just stay home forever" but realistically when it is night time at a bar I don't expect to have little kids running up to me dropping toys or using their outside voice continuously over the course of an hour or two.

There was one couple that came in with one toddler who was the one doing the running around and they were quite aware of it and left within a half hour or so, which is perfectly reasonable. They grabbed a drink and left cause their kid couldn't keep it cool. It was annoying still but a bit more...

Giving the Aranda shops' cafe-and-pub-from-a-single-owner combo a run for its money, Cook shops now has its own version, with the Little Oink owners opening a kinda-pub next door to their cute cafe.

With a great beer selection featuring 8 tap beers, half of which are local breweries, we're off to an excellent start. A four-beer taster paddle was quickly ordered and enjoyed.

From the simple menu we selected polenta chips with whipped blue cheese, and a Vego pizza (smoked eggplant, broccolini, chilli, fried onion, olive oil, almonds). The polenta chips arrived promptly and were tasty and perfectly fried. Not quite enough of the whipped blue cheese was provided, in our opinion. The pizza followed shortly after (we ate quite early on a Wednesday night, and the service was very quick). The Vego pizza wasn't listed as vegan (they don't have any such markings on their menu), but it may well have been - there was no cheese. The garlic and smoked eggplant base (no tomato) was delicious, as were the other toppings, but we couldn't detect the chilli that was advertised. In spite of that, and a somewhat tough base, the pizza was yummy and one of us continued to polish off the remaining two pieces after we had both declared ourselves full.

Ambiance is simple but does not feel cheap. The place is well furnished and the heaters in the outdoor areas were all working well, though we chose to sit inside at a very comfy booth. I think the place could use some wall decorations and dimmer lighting, but that's just me.

An excellent addition to the neighborhood, to Belconnen, and to Canberra. We...