The Rose Hotel is to be auctioned on the 27 April @ 12pm.

Having seen this ad, we knew that the first pub in our quest should be the Rose.  For those of you who don’t know, it is a classic inner city pub that harks back to the time when the area, Fitzroy, was poor and there was pretty much a pub on every corner, or so it seemed.

Thursday was a lovely evening. We are having a long, Indian summer and it has been glorious and worrying all at the same time; no boots, coats and 24 degrees at the end of April, is this global warming at its best?

Thelma and I wandered through Fitzroy, knowing where we were going; we didn’t pay too much attention, which was why we suddenly realised that the pub wasn’t where we thought it was, ie in Rose Street.  Feeling slightly foolish, and aware of the “No backward rule”, we had to take a moment, admire the black and white cat surveying its domain on the edge of a balcony, gather our bearings, and assure our selves that we had been here before and we knew where it was.  For those of you who are interested, the Rose is on the corner of Napier and Leicester St, near but not on Rose St.

The pub itself has the feeling of a locals’ local, you get the sense that the patrons belong there – it is an extension of their living space.

What we ordered, this is a PUB so naturally I had a chicken parma – good but interestingly it had sprouts (bean not Brussel) in the token salad – perhaps a nod to it to the gentrification of the area.  Thelma had brains, large size – her rating to the dish was “a good brain is melty in the mouth, this is a bit tuff.”.  Just by the way, one of the things you need to understand about Thelma is, if there is something quirky or unusual on a menu, she will gravitate towards it just because.

To drink, we had James Squires Nine Tales on tap, hadn’t had that before– nice.

For us, the entertainment at the Rose was provided by the classic family pub presentation of the large table with 6 adults sitting at one end and a collect of 5 children at the other. The Chuppa Chup machine provided endless fascination for the young folk, am not sure if it is training for pokies in later life but the potential of “a win” in the form of a free lolly on a stick had them all intrigued.

We couldn’t here much of what they spoke about but the quote that had us intrigued was by a sister to a brother: “It’s what girls do, you might what to know that”.  Sadly we missed the context but it did give us something to mull over, exactly what did he do that called his ‘boyhood’ into question, we actually had a second Nine Tales on the strength of that – two drinks is rare but as we were under budget ($60 all up) we could do this.

For meals and beer it cost: $40.50 then a second beer ($9.00) so all up dinner cost $49.50.

As Thelma said, our experience at The Rose, “was not perfect but what I needed and was nice enough”.

We walked from the Rose along St George’s road to Merri station, at which point Thelma realised that her car was not there, she had taken the tram that morning but as it was a pleasant evening she would continue to walk, or catch the tram, whatever took her fancy.