Royal Hotel Granville

Fresh off of our extremely pleasant surprise at the Royal Hotel Ryde, the Royal Tour rolled on through the suburbs of middle Sydney.  ‘Who knows’, we thought, ‘maybe Sydney’s heavily concreted central suburbs were actually hiding a trove of hidden gems’.  Then we arrived at the Royal Hotel Granville.

From the outside it looked nice enough.  Nothing special, but nice enough.  They had their own logo and stuff so, you know, there’s a bit of effort there.  Unfortunately, that was just about the high point.  Upon heading inside, there just wasn’t a whole lot on offer. 

To be fair, the Royal Hotel Granville had a big area of the pub with a few pool tables, some good places to site, and nice (if a bit generic) décor.  However, this was all roped off for a ‘private function’.  I’m not sure when it was starting, but that area was completely uninhabited for our (admittedly short) stay at the pub.

The areas that were open were the pokies and the TAB.  Given those options, we went for the TAB where there was at least sport on the TV.  We were joined by about 5 other patrons in almost total, awkward silence.  No one there seemed to know each other or oddly want to be in the pub.  Yet here they were, pretending to care about an early season Tennessee vs Alabama basketball game, avoiding eye contact, and smoking inside.

For our part, we opted to whisper to each other through clenched teeth about the awkwardness of the situation.   We also passed the short time we were there by alternately pretending to watch the basketball game and trying to find amusing semi-dirty sounding racehorse names from one of the 13 screens.

Despite the fun we were having with that, we rapidly finished our beers and departed to continue the Royal Tour elsewhere.  Maybe the Royal Hotel Granville would be fun if all of it was open and available.  It might be a perfectly serviceable pub normally.  But as it was when we visited, it’s unlikely to threaten our top 10 Royal rankings.

Editor’s note: after we get to Royal #30 on the blog, we’ll release our top 10 rankings that we’ll periodically update as we progress. 

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Granville, Sydney, NSW
• Population: 16,716
• Date Visited: Sunday, January 29, 2023
• Visited By: Cory, John
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: None
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Toohey’s New
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.50
• Unique Award: Royal Whose Patrons Most Resembled the Ship of Lost Souls
• Tour Progress: 18.4% (25/136)