The Indi

A group of four of us decided to head down to The Indi for an early Friday dinner to beat the crowds and watch the sunset over the marina. The Indi's location is amazing, right on the picturesque Mindarie marina looking out over the Indian Ocean with a fairly large outdoor area and large windows capitalising on the views.

The decor is also great, big leather couches, ample seating (both indoors and out), a huge marble topped bar and even a viewing window into the micro brewery where they brew a selection of handcrafted beers (four signature beers and a range of seasonal ones). Unfortunately the location and the decor is about all this pub has going for it at the moment. I have visited The Indi about once a month for the past three years and it has been on a rather steep and steady decline in terms of food and service quality.

By 6:00pm there were only a few tables left which is understandable for a Friday afternoon, all of them outdoors though. As there was an ice cold breeze coming in off the ocean, we thought we would try our luck getting one inside. As luck would have it, as we walked in a group was leaving so I quickly sat down to secure a table while the others headed for the bar to get drinks. This is about the point where the good times ended. There were a stack of dirty dishes on the table from the previous group so we tried to flag down a waiter to clear the table. There were only 3 wait staff looking after 40+ tables and after about 10 minutes of waiting we decided to remove the dishes ourselves. I put them near the food ordering spot at the bar (along with other dirty dishes that had presumably been placed there by other patrons) in the hope that they would take notice of them stacking up and eventually even realise that just bringing food out and not taking any dishes back into the kitchen presents a bit of a problem. While I dropped off the dishes I asked if we could please get our table wiped down, it was pretty bad, elbows sticking to the table and all was getting quite annoying.

After ordering our food and waiting another 20 minutes our table had still not been wiped down. Luckily my 20/20 vision had spotted a bottle of spray and wipe and a rag by the entrance on our way in so I grabbed it and wiped down the table myself. Not intending to, we started a trend and about 4 other people grabbed the spray and wipe and rag after me and cleaned their own tables. What amazed me most was the wait staff didn't raise an eyebrow when they saw people cleaning their own tables, nor did it catch the attention of the manager who was aimlessly perusing up and down the pub with no obvious intention and failing miserably at providing his staff any sort of direction or guidance.

As the night was off to a shaky start we decided to play it safe and order a couple of pizzas and fish and chips. I mean you can't stuff up a pizza and fish and chips can you?, if you're the kitchen staff at the Indi, yes you can! The fish was over battered, you could've greased a mid size truck engine with the excess oil from the serving. The chips were good, they had a tasty seasoning and were cooked well, but after the massive influx of oil from the fish, the chips were almost too much. The pizza came out a fraction below room temperature which ruined the whole thing. The flavours however were great but were overshadowed by the fact that you could've used the pizza to ice a mild sporting injury. To get the taste of cold pizza out of my mouth, I went to the bar to order some more beers. The pilsner and summer lager (seasonal) we're great but the pale ale and green (low-carb) we're not the best, could've been personal preference, but I thought the pale was far too bitter and the green just had a weird, almost chemical like, taste to it.

The menu was quite diverse as far as pubs go but considering the pizza and fish and chips were well below average I'd be surprised if they could successfully pull off a Chicken Tikka Curry or Jambalaya, at least not the "chef" that was in the kitchen on this particular occasion. On the whole food was not that pricey, but then again it was sub par so I wouldn't expect it to be. The drinks list was quite standard with the exception of the handcrafted beers on offer and prices were fairly reasonable.

The crowd were mostly locals and quite a bit older than you would find at most pubs, no 'tweens' though which was a pleasant change. On the whole I wouldn't say that the service was bad just that the place was extremely understaffed and managed very poorly. Wait and bar staff were friendly enough but most had a look of terror on their face because they knew they were understaffed and that things on the whole that day were not going well at all. I saw at least two people walking towards the food ordering section with full plates of food (both steaks that were most probably under/over cooked), dirty dishes were begining to resemble mini skyscrapers on tables throughout the pub and people that had ordered food generally had a look of utter disapointment on their faces.

I won't be going back here for food anytime soon but it's definitely a great place for an afternoon beer or two. We might give it another shot sometime in the future or if we get word that there has been a reshuffle of management/kitchen staff, however untill then, we'll be giving the place a wide berth.