Lunch

Press, 11 May 1977, Page 13

Lunch

S. Cargo t

The Hitching Post United Service Hotel Cathedral Square Telephone 791-060

The dining-room at the United Service Hotel has gone through several changes of name and style over the years, as if the owners were searching for the right formula. Its most recent change transformed it from a smorgasborg lunchplace back to a more conventional waitress-service dining-room. Whether this proves to be the right thing remains to be seen. Also remaining to be seen are vestiges of the dining-room’s former styles, right back to the heavy golden-fawn drapes of old. The early plaster mouldings can still be seen through the severe wooden slats of a more recent ceiling light fitting. The Hitching Post is the restaurant’s new name. To reinforce the idea, the walls are decorated with enlarged photographic prints of early Christchurch, the table mats show Cathedral Square as it looked in 1870, full of horse-drawn carts, and simulated gaslamps flicker at the top of new partitions of turned wood in the Edwardian style. The tabes have had their tops adzed to give them an uneven, pioneer carpentry appearance. A large notice board outside the restaurant lists all the items on the menu, and advises customers to place their orders at the desk as they enter. This feat of memory proved to be unnecessary. The waitress took our orders at the table. I heard about the Hitching Post from an enthusiast who reckoned it was pretty good value. He had been there several times for what he described as English-style fish and chips at a reasonable price. Our own lunch proved to be more like the was $7.80.)

curate’s egg I —good in parts. The good parts came at both ends. The soup was an excellent cream of vegetable, piping hot and without doubt made on the premises with no help from Mr Maggi. This would almost be reason enough in itself for choosing to dine at a restaurant with a traditional hotel kitchen. The soup was virtually a meal on its own, and the bread rolls were complimentary. The main course, however, was a disappointment. My whole flounder ($2) was only passable. It had been cooked and kept, I wouldn’t be surprised, because it was stiff and dry instead of equalling the picture I had in my mind of a moist freshly fried fish. We were there only minutes after the stroke of 12 o’clock, .so it seems likely that the kitchen had been doing a bit of stockpiling in anticipation of a Friday rush. The T-bone steak ($3) being eaten at my table was also described as “cool, dry, and tough,” perhaps for the same reason. Maybe the secret is to arrive later.

But both the apple pie and the boysenberry and ice-cream which we ordered for dessert were very good, and went some way to restoring the balance. Wine was available by the glass (35c for a smallish one) and the cona coffee was available on the self-service system. There was no charge for the coffee, and you could have as many cups as you liked—another welcome spill-over from the old days of the dining-room, in spite of today’s high coffee prices. (Lunch for two, with one glass of wine,