One of the Rose and Crowning glories of living in Mid Cornwall is the location and quality of its public houses - we are far more spoilt for choice in pubs than we are for clubs and restaurants. Our pubs are often very old, often set in beautiful locations and many are set at one end or the other of a delightful countryside or coastal walk. What better way to spend a chunk of Sunday?
In three years of regular Sunday roasting across the area, I can honestly say I have never had a bad one. Asking around, it seems the consensus is shared: Restormel pub roasts are of great quality. By no means are all pub roasts can make the same boast. I have had a fair few that couldn't. The worst was in a pub on London's Holloway Road, consisting of dry scraggly meat, nuked 'fresh' vegetables, tinned carrots and a gravy three OXO cubes short of a watery broth. In my mind, from this roast, the only way is up.
The GRRR Project
As a service to our ever growing readership we are starting the Great Restormel Roast Review. It is a long term project that will span the area in search of great Sunday roasts. Sadly the GRRR Project is having to be privately funded. We did try to get funding from the local RDA but Tesco's blocked it on the grounds that it might cause a drop in sales of their new organic sprout range. Nonetheless, we push onwards.
Unlike the restaurant reviews written by maverick individuals on midcorwnall.com, the GRRR Project will utilise an army of gluttonous volunteers to accompany us on our expeditions. Training for these missions is extensive. We are all experienced Sunday pub roast consumers, we all know how a good home roast can be and we now have our Bible, Heston Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection", specifically its chapter on the perfect roast. The clarion call for this monumental endeavor will be a simple "Hi such and such fancy going for a roast at...?"
So...much like Darwin's taxonomy of the Galapogos Islands or, more recently, the Human Genome Project, we are going to survey, describe and ultimately review the Sunday roasts in Restormel. A good Sunday roast isn't just about the food, the service, the pub or even the location, it is also about the nostalgia and the homeliness that the experience creates.
"From small sprouts do great Sundays grow." Unknown, Circa 2007.
1 comment:
great idea to review roasts, I consider myself a bit of a roast afficionado, we live in St Blazey and have gone to numerous local pubs, including 2 of the ones you reviewed - the Brit (food good, but not my favourite as I think the atmosphere is a bit lacking)and the Polgooth (great food, but I hate the family room which we get stuck in, unless sunny in which case the garden is pleasant), we often go to the Fort in Newquay which does great food and has a spectacular view and kids play area. The Ship at the bottom of Polmear Hill has improved its food recently and has a nice garden.
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