Fuse Bar

I can't really think of a better way to spend a rainy Perth afternoon than having a few beers and a warm pub lunch. We'd been past Fuse Bar at Hotel Northbridge on Brisbane St a few times, mostly on the way home from the Brisbane Pub, and thought we'd stop by for a drink and a meal.

It quickly became evident that this was an actual hotel bar, a proper hotel that is, i.e. they offer accommodation. The place had very little atmosphere and they even had a peculiar sign on the bar stating that "Patrons must have the intention to order food if they are ordering alcohol". In hindsight I wish we had reconsidered our intention to order food. We grabbed a few beers and found a spot near the bar to sit down and have a gander at the menus. The whole bar was pretty dirty, the couches looked like they hadn't been vacuumed/cleaned for a good few weeks and the menus looked like they had been dunked in beer and then sprinkled with assorted food crumbs.

Dirty menus aside, there was a small but sufficient selection of pub meals available, Matt went with the salt and pepper squid and I went with the chicken parmie, I hadn't had a decent parmie in a while and considering the bar was part of the hotel I assumed it would at least be decent, boy was I wrong! Our buzzer alerted us our food was ready for collection within 25 minutes of ordering, a pretty long wait considering we were one of three groups occupying the pub at the time. I much prefer table service over those stupid buzzers especially in this case, our food was left uncovered on a small table near the entrance for us to collect.

As far as parmies go, mine was woeful. It was not a chicken breast as advertised on the menu, it was a piece of tasteless processed chicken served with a more then generous side of over salted fried oven chips. The squid was ok at best, but again served with the over salted chips and you could just about count the squid rings on one hand. All up a very disappointing meal, thankfully they were relatively cheap, the two meals and two pints of James Squire beer came to just over 55 bucks. There was only one bloke behind the bar and he was helpful enough but I would go as far as saying friendly.

If you're ever heading down Brisbane street and drive by  Fuse bar, I'd  keep driving, either towards some of the better pubs on Beaufort street (The Brisbane, Five Bar etc) or if you're headed in the other direction, keep going until you hit one of the many bars in Leederville.