Parkview

Went today at 5pm, originally to have tea and coffee but my aunt decided to have main meal rather than going home to cook so we all decided to order mains.
I wanted the pork burger & chips and iced cappuccino but was told they had sold out of both so I chose the clam spaghetti and the ice coffee. Mum had the clams too and aunt ordered a risotto style dish.
The spaghetti came in a small dish and we both had 5 clams each! Aunt thought her dish was wrong but assured by waitress it was what she ordered so she ate it. It didn’t look like the photo!
It was fine, though it took us a while to order so I waved someone over. It was a shame they had sold out of things, not sure what time they close.
We saw other tables had ordered afternoon tea which looked lovely, we thought we should have tried that instead!

I’ll be honest — I didn’t have a good impression of Parkview. The first time I was there was about a year ago. I still remember that I ordered a Caesar salad and my mom ordered some sort of mushroom and cream pasta. My Caesar salad was average — some of the lettuce didn’t seem so fresh, though the chicken breast that came with it was tender. My mother’s pasta, on the other hand, wasn’t so good. It was only room temperature when served and the sauce was way too salty. She complained about the pasta throughout the meal, and we haven’t been back since.
But today, we decided we kind of wanted to give it a chance again. It was around 4pm and they were doing their afternoon tea set. The restaurant was crowded — we got a number and waited about 15 minutes.
I wasn’t too hungry, so I ordered the chocolate fondant with vanilla ice cream and my mother ordered the English breakfast. I was told that the fondant would take about a 10 – 15 minute wait, to which I said was fine because I wasn’t in a rush. At this point, a waiter next to me had dropped her tray while cleaning up the table next to ours and she and two other waiters had to come over with a broom and some towels to clean up the mess. This was a little annoying because they kept brushing past me, but they were done by the time the food came.
Remember the waiter saying my fondant would take some time? Well, it took no time at all, because it was here within 10 minutes. And it was good. The fondant was super chocolate-​y and rich, and the vanilla ice cream was a wonderful complement to it. I kind of wish that there was more ice cream though; I was almost done with it when I had about three quarters of the fondant left. The fondant was very rich, like I said, but in a way it was a little TOO rich. I felt like I had swallowed a pound of chocolate when I was done! But oh, it was so sinful and I don’t regret a thing.
And plot twist: my mother liked her English breakfast! The breakfast was pretty big — bread, two sausages, egg, bacon, tomato and baked beans, and a sizable portion of each too. She said that the bacon had quite a bit of fat and wasn’t crispy enough, and that some lettuce leaves weren’t fresh but she liked everything else.
Moral of the story? Give things another chance. We did, we’re glad, and we’ll definitely be back!