Monday, 20 August 2012

The almighty Sunday pub lunch roast

Yesterday was a real scorcher , a year high with hitting the mid twenties by early morning
In these sort of temperatures ones options tend to be limited. Having spent the last month on a constant roller coaster diet of concerts, plays and art exhibitions we decided to take a day off and go down to a pub to participate in a weekly English institution, the Sunday pub lunch
Both Julia and yours truly tend to steer clear of heavy meat meals as we are both coverts of a well promoted anti cancer campaign back in Christchurch that directly links the provinces high cancer rate to the massive local consumption  of red meat
With that thought in mind I dived onto the net to locate a pub acknowledged as being a winner with their Sunday  lunches , in combination with a halfway decent outdoor beer garden ( a must on a day when the temperature was climbing into the early thirties)
We finally settled on The Queens Head in Hammersmith as their client  reviews all looked positive and on their site the pub claimed that their Sunday Lunches were "to die for" and get this , they guaranteed that the Yorkshire Pudding's were so large they were they size of three closed fists (that's as in big meaty work mens fists, not the small  fists of an anorexic Asian woman)
When we entered The Queens Head around twelve thirty the place was full to overflowing with your typical fun loving beer guzzling loud voiced Sunday pub crowd
Straight to the bar to order drinks and food. We plugged for a lunch described as a Roast Trio , a meal which consisted of beef, pork, chicken and whatever else
Twenty minutes later we are kicking back in the beer garden and I happen to look over in the general direction of the kitchen just at the moment when our meals appear out of the kitchen door
I immediately bolt upright in my seat and manage to squeeze out of throat  to Julia, "look what's heading in our direction. I pray God that they've got the table number wrong"
Fat chance of that happening.
Two waitresses were bearing down on us , each holding with two hands a huge meat tray loaded to the gunnels with food
My initial thought was there had to be some mistake as it's simply wasn't possible for one human being to consume so much nosh in one, or two, or even three sittings
Each plate would have been at least 45x30 cm and the food was piled in places maybe 10cm high
Frankly I don't know what I might have expected . Maybe a bit of this and that, a few potatoes, a very greens , possibly some stuffing and decent gravy covering a volume of food more suitable for a  sixty year old looking forward to a smallish midday meal
So what did we get
For starters, half , yes  half a large chicken
A slab of beef. It was so big the only things that appeared to be missing from this dead beast were a set of ears and a tail
And pork. Between us Julia and my plates must have accounted for most of a small porker
No greens , no stuffing, no gravy
However to back-fill this meat mega feast we were invited to dig into three huge roasted potatoes, two massive hand fills  of parsnips , a small bucket load of under cooked carrots, and a mountain sized portion of swede and carrot mash, a horrible looking stodgy thing that even our Lab would have looked at twice before downing
And as for the Yorkshire Pudding, well their adverts weren't selling that pudding  short. This strange looking object was fully 20cm in diameter and 12cm high
I could see the look in Julia's eyes, she was horrified
For my part, I was numb, yes numb
My immediate thought was what kind of loonie chef is operating out of that kitchen. Is the guy insane!
If I eat this stuff I'm a dead man, it's as simple as that.
For the next thirty minutes both of us nibbled away at the fringes of this lunch nightmare
When a waitress came over to take another drinks order she saw that we were finding this culinary experience hard going and said " your meals must be getting cold by now, do you want me to take them back into the kitchen and zapp them in the microwave"
My response was immediate 
"look, if you can make these meals disappear and ensure that chef doesn't come charging at us with a carving knife in hand, then there's a good sized tip looking for your palm when you deliver our drinks"
Then the waitress with a knowing look responds "I know where you are coming from. We get these type of requests all the time from guests who find these roasts a bit much. Any room for dessert?"
In a perverse kind of way I really enjoyed the experience , albeit one that won't be repeated anytime soon

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