Sunday, May 10, 2009

Eat you heart out, Ian "Beefy" Botham...

I have just arrived home to chilly Queanbeyan, from God's country (Queensland), where I spent Saturday wandering around in a t-shirt and shorts. While I had some great ribs on the Gold Coast at an early mother's day celebration, the gastronomic highlight of the week was undoubtedly a carpet bag steak I had in Rockhampton on Thursday night. More on that soon. 

Yes, your intrepid sausage correspondent was in Rockhampton this week doing some research that just happened to coincide with Beef Australia 2009 - or "Beefweek" to the locals. Beefweek is one humdinger of a trade fair. It only happens every two or three years and it leaves other regional fairs I've seen, like the Henty Field Day or Kalgoorlie's Diggers and Dealers, for dead.

Why? 

Because you can't eat dirt and/or gold.  

Yes, it's all about the meat. And not just any meat. But the king of meats. Beef. 

Am I wrong, Mr Bedak? 

Imagine, 50,000 or so like-minded foodies, committed to producing the best beef they can, crammed into a town of 70,000 people for a week. Now slap on a few thousand Akubras and enough RM Williams to shoe an army and you're getting close.  

As for the steak? Well, it was a rib fillet taken from a Laglan Pastoral Co. Brahman, stuffed with half a dozen fat Pacific oysters, drizzled with a red wine jus and served with vegies and mashed tatties at the Great Western Hotel. What an absolute cracker of a steak. I just had to wave my knife in its general direction and a slab of gelatinous goodness would fall away faster than a Treasury Department revenue forecast. Sure the vegies were a bit on the overcooked side, and the mash was a little lumpy, but let's face it, the vegetable items were there either for decoration or to assuage the Catholic guilt that comes from eating 400g of pure ecstasy-inducing, buttery, beefy goo.  




So when next in Rocky, I can't commend to you strongly enough to get along to the Great Western, where you should order the biggest steak you can find. You can't miss it. It's the big pub on Stanley St that has an indoor rodeo arena attached for your viewing pleasure. Next time, I'm sampling the place on a Friday, to see the bullriders in action... that's what I call an interesting take on "paddock to plate".

6 comments:

  1. Oh my god that looks good.

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  2. Yup. Rocky Beef Week is all well and good, but do they have a Beef Week Queen like Casino's? I think not. And for this year only, the winner isn't scarier to look at than the breed she represented.

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  3. On The Wifes side of the family, her dads family are evenly split between Rocky and Casino, so you have to be very carefull when you mention the phrase "beef capital of Australia".

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  4. It was THE BEST, Paul, THE BEST.

    Dr, there were some interesting folks there...think I may have been the only person in one or two meetings with a full set of my own teeth.

    Yeah Beeso, I was at uni with someone from Casino and have heard that. But I bet they don't have many Brahmans in Casino. This was better than Wagyu, in my humble opinion.

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  5. Yep I have had lunch at the Great Western Hotel in Rocky - they have a full blown rodeo ring with live bulls instead of a beer garden.

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