The Green Parrot Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Canterbury

We into Methven on a Tuesday night and my wife and I were looking for a good place to eat and interestingly most of the restaurants are closed on Tuesday. This turned out to be a great thing for us because we found The Green Parrot Bar & Grill. It was actually a cold and rainy day and we had been walking around town looking for a place to eat when we saw it and walked in. Wow, we step into a toasty atmosphere warmed by a raging wood burning stove and the friendly greeting of the owner and our server.

The appearance of the interior isn’t what we would have expected in a small town and was almost what you might find in a mountain retreat with high ceilings and wood decor and features.

The menus surprised us too because it was almost what you’d find in a upscale restaurant in a big city, but not with the high prices. We had the hot pepper shrimp in a butter sauce as an appetizer served in a sizzling cast iron pan. A huge pile of roasted vegetables with a sweet sauce lightly sprinkled over the top. The orange roughy was melt in your mouth pan fried instead of baked, as suggested. The chicken burger was not your usual slab of plain grill chicken, but a batter fried chicken breast with a wonderful savory mayonnaise sauce on a glazed type bun.

Not only was the food and atmosphere excellent, but our service we received from Lee was great. As I told the owner, the only negative thing about us coming here is that her restaurant is not in the town where we live or we would be there...

I am not one to usually write reviews, however, I am so unbelievably disappointed with the experience I had at this place. We came to this restaurant on Sunday the 19th for a birthday celebration . We booked a table for 7 people with two young children. We were told to take a seat when we walked in and that menus and cutlery would be brought to us, however, we waited and never recieved menus. When two of our group members tried to order drinks after 40 minutes of no service, they were told to go back to the table and that someone would be over to take our orders. After 1hour we finally received service for our drink orders and were given food menus. Having two young children and a booking we were very disappointed with service times. We waited another 15 minutes to actually receive the drinks we ordered and this was after we watched numerous new tables receive drinks and service before us. I do appreciate that the restaurant seemed a little busy, but I work in hospitality and it is common sense to serve people in order of arrival. After 1.5 hours we finally recieved some of our food while tables around us arrived and left. As we walked out after our food, we saw one of the waitresses standing on her phone. We will definitely be considering different places...

We came by for dinner and were fortunate enough to get a table without a booking. We ended up in the dining room at the back of the restaurant. The menu wasn't too big but it did have quite a nice range of items. They also had specials for each night. I tried the Brahma Malzbier and enjoyed it because it was surprisingly quite sweet. Started with the calamari and the fried chicken. The calamari was perfect. It was cooked perfectly so it was quite tender and it had a nice crispness to it. The fried chicken was also quite tender and juicy. I had the roasted ribeye and that was nice. Nice slab of beef with nicely cooked vegetables. I did find it on the dry side without the gravy. Had the brownie for dessert and that was nice. It wasn't overly gooey but was rich and chocolatey. It was quite a nice option for dinner and possibly drinks as they had a bar out front. The entrees were amazing but the mains didn't reach that bar. It was still a nice...