The Holdy is located on Brighton Road opposite the Glenelg Football Club. The venue is modern and spacious, and has your typical gaming area, dining space, bar areas, beer garden and bottle shop. It even has it’s own micro brewery. The food offerings are nothing exciting and it reads like a textbook pub menu.

The decor is sleek, modern, stylish and spacious. The dining area cleverly flows into the beer garden to create a nice large open space. There’s plenty of natural light coming from all directions giving this place a casual relaxed vibe.

For dinner, I had the Braised Lamb Shank. The dish came out less than 10 minutes after ordering and was nicely presented.

The lamb was well marinated, tender and succulent, and the meat simply fell off the bone. The shank sauce had a nice thick consistency and the flavour was well balanced. The mashed potato was delicate and creamy, and complemented everything well.

One of the members in the group had the Chicken Parmi. The chicken was tender and succulent, and was nicely crumbed. The Napoletana sauce was rich in texture and had good coverage over the schnitzel. The mozzarella cheese was generous and beautifully browned under the grill. The battered chips were nice and crunchy and adequately salted. The salad looked a little limp and the amount provided was very conservative.

The staff were friendly and the service was good. The atmosphere was relaxed and the pricing was reasonable. My dish cost $19 which was quite good because it was well executed.

This was my first time at The Holdy, and the experience was a pleasant one.

WHERE: 83 Brighton Rd, Glenelg