Any Portlander in a storm – a night at the Rydges

Ages ago we saw an ad in the paper for The Portlander at Rydges Wel­ling­ton  in the paper, and after look­ing at pic­tures of their bur­gers, we headed along there for lunch. The lamb bur­ger was slow-cooked in duck fat, and it was deli­cious, crispy bits spill­ing out every­where. The onion rings were heav­en too, second only to Monterey’s (although this com­ment­at­or dis­agrees). Need­less to say, we were pretty excited when we got invited along to the launch offi­cial launch a couple of months ago.

We guzzled Moët like it was Lindauer, and oggled the shiny shiny machine they were using to slice up char­cu­ter­ie. It was beau­ti­ful theatre, and I think they bust it out some­times dur­ing happy hour. I can also tell you that their air-dried way­gu beef is deli­cious.

What was even bet­ter though was serv­ers car­ry­ing around plates of all the dif­fer­ent kinds of steak so we could try them all. One has a bone longer than my arm. Guess which one is my favour­ite?

Hav­ing been for din­ner a couple of times now, I can say oh fuck yes, this is the Portlander long bone OP rib, and it is AMAZING. We do recom­mend shar­ing it though, because it’s 500 grams. No one needs to eat that much meat by them­selves, espe­cially since it’s $46. Without sides. But if you keep read­ing, I will tell you how you can get it cheap­er. But first I want to say that the serv­ers at Portlander are very friendly, but it can be a little hard to flag them down when you need things like but­ter for your bread – and you will need but­ter because the three times I’ve tried their bread, it has been dis­ap­point­ingly unfresh (not stale, just not up to the stand­ard that you’d expect).

In the interests of sci­ence, we decided to book in for a night at the Rydges to see how it was, which is when I dis­covered that if you join their pri­or­ity guest rewards (for free!) not only do you save on hotel room book­ings and get a later check­out, but you also save 20% on all food and drinks. That is totally worth giv­ing up your email address for. Also I should point out that it seems you can get rooms cheap­er dir­ectly through them rather than try­ing to use some­thing like Wotif or Hotels.com, just so you know (we paid $154 for the room and two break­fasts and a late check­out).

Now, look­ing back, you might remem­ber as we did a review of The Hol­i­day Inn which has now become the Rydges. It appears that decor-wise, not much has changed.  I espe­cially agree with people’s com­ments that the air­con was a bit hard to use and also quite noisy. The room my boo and I stayed in was a Super­i­or Double on the sixth floor, and we actu­ally had a bit of a har­bour view. It was essen­tially just big enough to fit the two double beds, but did­n’t feel too crowded.  The bath was dis­ap­point­ingly short, but the shower was fant­ast­ic. The bath­room walls are still that half-opaque glass, but it was­n’t an issue to leave the blind down. It was curi­ous though, because I’d under­stand its pur­pose if the shower was in front of the glass, like, oooh, sexy shower time like the many hotels who have spa pools in the main room, but the thing is the toi­let is right in front of the glass, not the shower. Nev­er­mind.

Speak­ing of get­ting wet, we went down to the pool for a swim, and were impressed by the stacks and stacks of tow­els all around, but it was a very skinny pool and not so great for people who wanted to float while oth­ers wanted to swim lengths. The spa pool was lovely, sur­roun­ded by big win­dows so we could bask in the sun. I could­n’t com­ment on the gym, because ha, except that it looked very small (although I read you can get free passes to a big­ger gym nearby if you need them).

Room ser­vice brought us up cheese and tiram­isu pretty speedily, although we would have wel­comed chut­ney instead of plain wal­nuts with the cheese. We were a little dis­ap­poin­ted in the break­fast selec­tions offered on the card hanging on the door though. Our room deal included two break­fasts, but there was­n’t an option for a con­tin­ent­al break­fast (and it seemed like a waste to just order ‘toast and spreads’), so we put down that we wanted two big break­fasts. We did­n’t see a space to select how we wanted our eggs cooked, but they rang the next morn­ing to ask and then only delivered us one. Sad face. By the time a second break­fast was delivered, we did­n’t really want it that much any­more. The eggs were (appar­ently) cooked per­fectly, and the saus­age and hash browns were really good, but the toast was kinda bleh. That might have been because the eggs were sit­ting on them though, and eggs are gross.

So, over­all, I love Portlander, and will return there as often as funds and desire to eat large amounts of meat dic­tate. I would also be pretty com­fort­able recom­mend­ing The Rydges as a hotel to stay in too, although I would sug­gest that it might be a bet­ter option to go for the break­fast buf­fet, or just get break­fast in any num­ber of oth­er cafes around town.

PS – Oth­er hotels: we’d love review you too. Get in touch!