The Merrywell

The Burswood Casino complex has come a heck of a long way from the ‘old days’. Just in case you’ve been in a coma for the last 12 months, a little while back Crown Limited purchased, refurbished and re-branded The Burswood Entertainment Complex as Crown Perth. To say the place has improved is an understatement, they’ve swapped out the drab and dingy casino interior for a brighter modern look, made the pool area look like something you’d find in Las Vegas but most importantly, they’ve opened up a bunch of new bars and restaurants, including their newest pub, The Merrywell.

Even though the name suggested it, I can’t ever remember ‘The Cas’ as being an “Entertainment Complex”, it was a place you went to gamble and then drown your sorrows/blow your winnings at one of the few bars they had tacked on to the casino floor. Their recent transformation has completely changed this in my opinion, people now head there for the bars and restaurants and the casino has become somewhat of an afterthought. A mate and I popped down on Friday afternoon for a late-ish lunch at their flagship pub, The Merrywell.

First impressions were solid, the decor throughout is great, lots of wood and glass giving it a modern yet slightly rustic feel. The pub is fairly large with plenty of places to sit both inside and out, given Perth was still going through a heatwave, we chose to sit indoors to escape the heat and take advantage of the air conditioner. If you’ve read other reviews on this joint or listened to people talk about it, you would have heard the term “dude food” being bandied about. As far as I can tell “Dude Food” is basically just another term for junk food done well, think; burgers, hotdogs, wings, fried chicken and anything involving bacon (they even have bacon aioli). It’d be hard to find someone on the face of this planet who could not find something they like on The Merrywell’s menu, it all sounds so good. We went with the mac and cheese bites with HP sauce, pulled pork quesadillas and lollipop buffalo wings with blue cheese fondue.

The annoying thing about ordering the food is that you have to walk to the other side of the pub to place your order, not sure why you can’t place your order at the bar like most other pubs or at least have a small section of the bar blocked off for food orders only. You’d expect that a pub that’s part of a ‘5-star’ entertainment establishment would have table service (at least they brought the food out to you and didn’t have those annoying buzzers). It’s probably a good thing you have to walk a bit before ordering your food, considering most of it would never get even close to gaining the heart foundation’s tick of approval. The food came out within 15 minutes which was quite quick considering that most of the inside tables were now occupied. All three of our dishes were delicious! The mac and cheese bites were crunchy, not too oily and went well with the HP sauce. The pulled pork quesadillas were also very tasty, with plenty of meat and a tangy lime flavour to them. The clear winner for me were the buffalo chicken wings, the buffalo sauce had a good kick to it and produced an amazing flavour when paired with the creamy blue cheese dipping sauce.

All up our food came to just under $60 for three dishes, which is quite fair given the quality of ingredients and the serving sizes. Beers were also fairly priced, around the $10 mark for a pint. If you haven’t been down to Burswood in a while it’s definitely worth checking it out post-renovation and if you do go make sure you pay The Merrywell a visit.