Kitchen Insider
27/11/2022
I love country pub meals...enthusiastic apprentices, learning how to cook solid basics at the hands of seasoned, local food tradies...not here though. Here, we are subject to a sad, counter-style dormitory sponge, in the guise of a constructed meal. When the least problematic item on two plates is the Thai farmed barra fillet, you know you got 99 problems. The undercooked char-look eggplant hides in shame under a sauce that itself needs the pre processed molten rubber ("cheese product") to hide under. This sauce isn't the quality tinned tomato sugo, laced with garlic, onion, oregano and olive oil. It's more akin to the drained contents of 85c tinned spaghetti. The frozen beans could have been somewhat rescued from their random cutting and drowning, with some seasoned butter, or olive oil (dare I ask for caramelised onion?). And yet, they are left to fend for themselves next to pieces of sweet potato, seeming survivors of a mad machete attack by a random malevolent who happened to invade the kitchen a while back. They too are left "au natural"...in itself ironic. In a world where we look to the countryside as the last vestiges of a real world view, this place is a veritable knackery of cookery.