The Lion Hotel in Melbourne Central is a large pub-style restaurant next to the Hoyt’s ticket queue. Generally a restaurant in a shopping centre has to be something fantastic to impress me, since I prefer outdoor or street-front dining. The Lion unfortunately wasn’t. It’s a bit overpriced for the quality of the food, which is nothing outstanding.
I was there meeting a friend for lunch, and shared a foccacia and the soup of the day, a carrot-coriander concoction. The sandwich was good, standard foccacia, but did the cook even taste the soup? It was horribly bitter, inedible really. No one I was eating with thought it was any good either, so I’m assured it wasn’t just a personal aversion to carrot and coriander.
However, at the end of the meal it was quite clear that the soup had barely been touched and the waitress nicely said that had we just asked she would have brought me something else. The service is good, but the atmosphere and food are a bit average. If I tried it again, I’d go in the evening and stick to drinks.
