Public House Petersham

Love the atmosphere at Public House Petersham. The outdoor area is fantastic and the food is always good (great wood-fired pizzas). Just a heads up that parking is a challenge. You might have to park a few streets away and walk, as there isn't much available right out front. Worth the walk for the beer garden though! 🌿

What a beautiful space and what a shame the bland food and terrible service let it down. The kids had such a great time playing in the kids area we could actually converse but the staff didn’t want to be there and how hard is it to nail a parmi!?

Only the pizza is worth eating, the other dishes are not good. Schnitzel way over cooked and dry as hell. Service is simply inadequate for such a large venue. You always, always wait too long for a drink. Table digital ordering never works. It's good for kids but I have a feeling it will get pretty old, pretty fast for a lot of people. The beer situation is atrocious, one week they have Calton dry, gone the next. But the most annoying thing is the perpetual state of fully booked tables. It feels like you're walking into Tetsuyas everytime you walk in the joint. We have even been asked to move off a table that wasn't booked when we sat down for some mob that rang up after we arrived and booked. This is so annoying it makes me never want to return. Change this ridiculous policy please. Unless you have a party of 20 or more, no bookings available. It's a joke.

The venue is very cool and the food wasn’t horrible but wasn’t good either, however, my biggest issue is their lack of care for dietary requirements. I am pregnant and asked the lady at the front counter if the ricotta was cooked well in the zucchini flowers as I’m pregnant and can’t eat uncooked ricotta - I could tell she didn’t really care to check or care about the question - she nod her head “yes”. I ordered them. I got the food and began eating it - next to it was what looked like an “avocado” dip - I ate that too. I realised while eating the zucchini flowers that I couldn’t taste any ricotta cheese inside it - I opened it up and to my surprise there was NO ricotta cheese inside - I then went to the counter and asked them to refund the meal (assuming they’ve forgotten to put ricotta into the flowers) and I was not going to wait for them to remake it when I had all my other food getting cold (which by the time this was sorted, my food was freezing when I got back to my table - it wasn’t even that long, but somehow it was freezing!) anyhow - when I was being refunded for the zucchini flowers, I was told it’s cause the ricotta cheese is actually in the “avo dip” - so I asked “so that wasn’t cooked ricotta???” And they replied “no it’s not cooked” - I looked over at the girl who nod her head and said it was, she couldn’t care at all at the fact she’d just been so careless about a serious dietary requirement - and I said “well I hope nothing happens to me now”. This is unacceptable and extremely disappointing. Train your staff better. I now have to live fearful for the next few days of what may happen to my baby if I get sick from this.

The rump steak special here is an absolute steal when it’s on. Please never stop serving the steak with the red wine jus, it’s so much better than the gluggy, gloopy, insipid sauces 99% of other pubs serve with steak. Even the dessert, the tiramisu fried ice cream (pictured) was really nice. However, I have two criticisms. First, the choice of beers on tap is incredibly boring. It’s run of the mill Young Henry’s and major brewery stuff. It was way better a few years ago. Second, the outside dining area does not have enough lighting, which leads to quite a sombre mood unfortunately.