Shorty's Bar

"chicken"

I've wondered about this place while walking past, so I decided to bite the bullet and try out their lunchtime parma special, despite (slight) reservations about the quality of parmas in a cafe. $15 gets you a parma and a drink of your choice (beer on tap, soft drink, or milkshake). I chose the milkshake. $15 for this parma is a solid choice, though not if you're somebody who needs their salad at lunchtime. The chicken breast was pretty good - nice and think. I thought the crumbing was pretty nice and crunchy (different to the last three parmas I had) so it was a nice change. My dining companion thought that the chicken breast was a little dry. The price you pay for a crunchy crumbing, I guess... I thought there was a decent amount of meat, though by no stretch was this a massive eat. The topping was ok - first, the ham slices that they used on top of the parma was chunky, good quality ham. I would have given this a +2 bonus points if required. Unfortunately, the sauce was merely a tomato jam and the cheese, very minimal. Not bad tasting, but there wasn't enough sauce/jam and cheese on top. The cheese was melted perfectly. I quite liked their chips, crunchy and seasoned with some seasoning I wasn't familiar with (my dining companion suggested helpfully that it was cajun seasoning). It worked well with the crinkly cut chips. Sadly, no salad was provided. That's a little disappointing. No points were awarded for this criteria. Overall, a good parma and decent value for money. Of course, if you are particular about little aspects of your parma (slightly dry texture, minimalist sauce and cheese, lack of salad), it might not be to your taste. For the record, I liked this parma, and wish that more restaurants would adopt the idea of using a thick, good quality chunk of ham (two here) that the chef has used in this case. Well done, fix these little things up and you'll have a very good parma.

Size

3/5

Meat

3/5

Topping

2/5

Chips Quality

5/5

Chips Qty

2/3