There are three pubs in Boorowa, NSW: The Ram and Stallion, which offered a $9 special called "half-rump with chips & salad", The Courthouse Hotel, where the $10 special was T-bone steak with chips & salad, and the Boorowa Hotel where the $10 special was the Sunday Roast.
I chose the $10 Roast. Lamb and pork were offered but at 12:45 when I arrived the lamb was already gone. The roast pork wasn't bad value. It came with potatoes, pumpkin, broccoli, peas, corn, carrots, and kumara. Meat smothered in gravox gravy. No crackling.
You can't expect too much more for $10, but there are ways of improving such a dish without making it more expensive. Try replacing some of the vegetables with an apple puree. Use the meat juices in the gravy instead of gravox.
Boorowa is gorgeous. It gently decays in sunshiny shabbiness. Along Trucking Yard Lane are relics of the long-closed branch line: a timber trestle railway bridge over a weedy gully, a beautiful signal - intact - and a turn-table.
Decided to drive on to the pretty village of Murringo for coffee. No pub there but on a previous visit I had a decent cappucino at the cafe. Too bad. The cafe had closed down. Get out there you wanky Canberrans and support these little places!
Zigzagged through the countryside past St Clements (now there's a story for another post) to Galong - no coffee there, and the pub was not open - then Binalong where a Glassblower made me a superb long black with milk on the side.
That was my second attempt to sample the $10 Sunday roast at the Boorowa Hotel. The first time, a few months earlier, a vintage car club arrived just before me and about 20 members of this ancient and boring species trooped into the pub.
ReplyDeleteSo I crossed the road to the Courthouse Hotel, which had a roaring log fire and no customers. Evidently, at some stage, the publican of this establishment had gone to Thailand and got himself a Thai wife, as they do, because the counter menu listed Red/ Green/ Yellow/ Chicken/ Beef/ prawn curry $12.50. The green chicken curry she served me was very good, very hot with capsicum and beans and carrots in it.