Royal Hotel Carlton

With our expectations sufficiently brought back down to earth, we departed Granville for the Royal Hotel Carlton.  “Surely”, we reasoned, “this Royal is going to fall somewhere in between the extremes of Ryde and Granville”.  It did.

Yes, I do realise that is exceedingly lukewarm praise.  But this was a lukewarm pub.  But I mean that in a good way.  Or at least a slightly good way.  And after Granville, that’s really all we were after.  Again, that’s not meant to be paying out the Royal Hotel Carlton.  It was extremely, outstandingly acceptable.

It’s the Jet of pubs. And I mean at least we’re not talking the Nickelback or Limp Bizkit of pubs, so that’s definitely a good thing.  The pub is actually pretty big on the inside.  And it’s the kind of place that feels like it would actually be equally suited to getting stuck into a bit of a session as it would be to popping in for a lunch on a Sunday with the family. 

Décor is inoffensive and probably just on the nice side of ‘meh’.  Kind of like pub décor from a catalogue, but they picked the premium economy stuff from the catalogue.

The beer selection was a fairly comprehensive array of just about every generic beer on the market.  The only ‘up market’ beer on offer was Balter which pretty well typified the pub.

The food I will say I quite enjoyed.  The nachos had actual house-made guacamole instead of the artificially lime green coloured stuff you often see on pub nachos that was likely taken out of a plastic tub using an ice cream scoop.  Although if I was going with the theme of the pub, I probably should’ve ordered a something like a plain piece of grilled chicken with maybe a salad that was 90% iceberg lettuce.

All in all we enjoyed our time at this Die Hard 2 of pubs.  There are better ones out there, but there are certainly worse as well.  And it wasn’t an unenjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.  Even if you’ll probably have to think hard to try to differentiate it from the others when you think back on it.

The Royal Hotel Carlton is a fine pub.  It’s got a fair bit going for it: big tv screens for sporting events, decent (but not amazing) beers on tap, a pretty good bistro, and a nice setting to enjoy it all in.  If you find yourself in Carlton (the NSW one) for some reason, you could do worse than the Royal Hotel.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Carlton, Sydney, NSW
• Population: 10,631
• Date Visited: Sunday, January 29, 2023
• Visited By: Cory, John
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Carlton
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Balter XPA
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $9.50
• Unique Award: Most Slightly Above Average Royal
• Tour Progress: 19.1% (26/136)