Kevin’s Pub Sydney will be the only pub with a cover charge, in memory of the greatest scam artist of our times.
I was in Sydney on a business trip with a colleague, and we found a bar, and as we attempted to enter, a rather bulky gentleman said, “There’s a $20 cover charge.” That seemed steep to us foreigners, so we protested, and started to walk away. He said, “But it also gets you into the club across the street.” My thought was that if one club sucked, you could go across the street, but if they were related, wouldn’t they both suck? So, we were about to pass, when he said, “You’re not from here, are you?” I said, “We’re from Texas”, he said, “Let’s just make it $10” and had a sale. He also made two out-of-towners feel welcome.
Later, as we were going to cross the street to visit the other club, we talked with him for a while. He let us in on his great secret – the management expected a $5 cover charge per person. He just charged everyone $20 and if he got it, he was rich, and if not, he dropped it to $10, made a friend, and still made $5 per person.
So, when you visit Kevin’s Pub Sydney, prepare for a cover charge.
There’s a restaurant somewhere in Sydney that has kangaroo and emu on the menu. As the waiter said, “You can eat 2/3rds of the coat of arms.”
Sydney was the first place we heard the term “intention to eat”. We didn’t understand what it meant until Auckland.