Tag Archives: Meat Review

Meat Review – The Bootlegger Bar

As I mentioned when reviewing the E-I-E-I-O burger, I love a meal where there is more than one meat contained within the dish. And on a recent visit to Katoomba NSW I discovered a restaurant-slash-bar that had on its menu a dish that contained not two meats or three but indeed four!

So lets have a gander at the Bootleggers Meat Share Plate.

A meal made in Trev-heaven!

So the description of the meal is a Share Plate and it is indeed intended for two people. Given it was our anniversary I relented and shared this plate with my wife, but being the kind woman she is she let me devour the lions portion of it.

The meal comes with four meats from two different animals. Beef brisket and links (sausages) and chicken wings as well as fried chicken. Personally I would have preferred the links be made out of pork but you can’t have everything.

Along with the above came enough non-meat foods to ensure that you would have some chance of being able to pass your next bowel movement. Slaw, Corn, Pickles, Potato Salad and Chips. Good to see that at least 40% of the sides were spud based – potatoes being that good that they should almost be considered an honorary meat!

Unto the breach!

The meats were all very tender. The fried chicken was done very well, not remotely oily or greasy like that one would get from a fast food restaurant. The chicken wings were lightly spiced so not as hot as buffalo wings but at least had a bit of bite to them. The brisket was very tender as brisket should be. The only meat that didn’t impress me was the links. They weren’t bad in any way, but just your average beef sausages so were somewhat overshadowed by the rest.

The non-meat stuff was good too. I think. I dunno, I wasn’t really paying attention.

 

Exploding Hot Sauce!

Sauce made by chef Wile. E. Coyote

The waitress brought out two types of hot sauce, espousing their virtues about how they were made on site, not simply store bought. As readers of my blog would know I love hot sauces so was eager to try them out. The red hot sauce was indeed very hot, not as hot as the likes of Mad Dog 357, but still had a helluva kick. The green sauce? Well I went to open it…

…and it exploded!

Perhaps exploded is not the right term. The heat had built up in the bottle so as soon as the top was twisted it made a sound like shook up cola can and the sauce blew forth! It covered my shirt, splattered my face and even left a sorta Trev-shaped splatter pattern on the window behind me.

The poor young waitress was very apologetic. After ascertaining that it had not gone in my eyes she brought multiple wet paper towels for me to clean myself, then later appeared with a shirt from the restaurants merchandise stash for me to wear home. So sadly, unless I had chosen to lick my clothing I never got to sample what the green hot sauce tasted like.

The shirt I wear when doing my radio show, though my music isn’t bootlegged – the CD’s are just really worn

 

Overall

This meal is nearly $80 but its certainly enough for two people (as long as one isn’t me) and its very good tasting. Besides the volatile hot sauces the only other accompaniment was a small bowl of BBQ sauce – personally I would have preferred to get a hearty gravy but perhaps that would push the meal into the realms of making a coronary a certainty. The bar had a different selection of wheat beers on tap which were quite nice, but if you’d take my recommendation skip the ginger based beer, it was pretty average.   So yeah, do yourself a favour and if in Katoomba drop past Bootleggers – you will get a decent feed and maybe a free shirt!

 

Related Articles:

Meat Review: Pepino’s Mexican Restaurant

Meat Review: The Kings Hotel

Meat Review: Cactus Jam

Meat Review – The Kings Hotel part 2 – Steaky Goodness!

A bit over a year ago I did my first review of The Kings Hotel in Bathurst and lauded both the quality and most definitely the quantity of their meaty meals.  In particular The Cajun Surf & Turf, Rack of Pork Ribs and my personal favorite The Kings Kilo Steak!

Well here we are again and we are going to look at 3 more offerings, this time of the more subdued kind but still all impressive beef steaks in their own right – The 300gm Rump, the 350gm Sirloin and the 400gm T-Bone.

Makes for good reading!

Sadly not all 3 steaks were mine.  My mother-in-law chose the rump (which I suspect was due to it was the cheapest and she was trying to be nice to the person paying) and my wife chose the sirloin.  Personally I went the T-Bone – I know everyone has their own opinion on what is the best steak (porterhouse, scotch fillet etc) and whilst I love them all with a passion the T-Bone is hands down the cut of choice for me (for my mother’s awesome recipe for T-Bone steak see HERE).

Left to Right: Sirloin, T-Bone, Rump. Now THIS is the kind of 3some I dream about!

It’s hard to know what to write about these steaks as they were all the same – damn good!  When you asked for medium you GOT medium (so neither burnt nor raw like many supposed chefs seem to think ‘medium’ is) and the meat was thick, fresh and juicy.  Certainly hadn’t been sitting in a freezer for a month.  Also they, to my expert eye, seemed to be the proportions advertised.  When working as a night-porter in Dalhousie Castle in Scotland many years ago I was absolutely disgusted when a chef there told me some of the tricks he used to pull to make a 350gm steak look like a 500gm – a shootable offence in my opinion!

I was disappointed that my wife and mother-in-law didn’t leave any scraps on their plate for me to scavenge as I am used to having a BIG meal whenever I visit The Kings but that attests to how much they enjoyed their steaks.  The sauces were all good too, I went the pepper, my wife the mushroom and my mother-in-law the gravy.  All very nice indeed and excellent to dip your chips in.

 

So yes, if your tastes run a little more tame then I can heartily recommend these three steaks which would probably receive top billing at any other establishment.  But honestly, if you end up at The Kings do yourself a favour and get either The Kings Kilo Steak or the Cajun Surf & Turf – hands down two of the best feeds you will ever have!

Steak, Steak, Steak, Steak
Steak, Steak, Steak, Steak
Luverly Steak!