The Perth Royal Show, 2006 – Part 3 – THE FOOD!
Food, food, everywhere! Fairy floss (cotton candy), donuts, toffee apples and waffles were plentiful. Click on the pictures to see the larger versions.
Chicken Treat, Red Rooster, Bunga Raya Satay, The Pancake Van. Click on the pictures to see the larger versions.
Bare Crush Icy Poles (made with 100% frozen fruit), Japanese stand from the Japan pavilion, Choc Bananas, Twisted Chips., Fish and Chips, Wood Fired Pizza. Click on the pictures to see larger versions.
We began our day at the Show with a shared 9-inch dagwood dog ($4.50, yeah, quite a rip-off, really, for a battered sausage on a stick dipped in tomato sauce!). The sausage inside was one of those red-skinned frankfurters with soft pink meat inside. It was a little on the bland side, but the hot batter and tomato sauce made it gooooood (plus, we hadn’t eaten breakfast and were ravenous). I’d only ever eaten a dagwood dog once before – five years ago at my first ever Royal Show. I’ve decided that dagwood dogs will be a Show tradition for me. Shortly after demolishing it (and almost impaling myself on the stick through over-enthusiastic biting – those things are dangerous!), we kept walking and found another stall not too far away that sold dagwood dogs for $4 each. Oh well. I also saw another place advertising Pluto Pups for sale. Can anyone tell me what those are?
That last time we were at the show, we found this American BBQ Ribs stand right at the end of the day when we were too full to eat anything else. On this occasion however, we made no such mistake! Hickory smoked baby back pork ribs with special sauce! Oh yeah.
I watched the rib man barbecuing the ribs and painting them thickly with that special sauce.
We bought one serve of pork ribs ($7.00) to share. They were sooooooo goooooood. Just look at the special barbecue sauce oozing around my thumb. Definitely finger-sucking good (no, not finger-licking! Sucking gets it all!)
The hot dogs looked pretty good too. The pork ribs are delicious and most definitely worth a try, but for corn on the cob, you should go to JD’s Hot Buttered Corn stall (which is coming up later in this post).
This pig statue stands at the side of the stall. I must say, gorgeous pork ribs, creepy pig statue.
Around lunch time (yes, we had a dagwood dog and pork ribs for breakfast) we decided to share a lamb shank, fried onions, chips and gravy ($12.00) from the famous Lamb Van. This is my Mum’s all-time favourite food stall at the Show. She told us this weekend (again!) how much she loves eating a lamb shank from the Lamb Van.
No, that’s not my reflection in the glass. Hahaha. A couple of the staff glanced curiously at me as I took photos, but luckily they were too busy to worry too much about what I was doing. I liked the look of these baby carrots. I guess they must come with the roast lamb dinner.
Here’s the Lamb Van menu:
We found ourselves a spot of sunshine to sit in, and dug in with fingers. As Flower commented in Part 1, it was very much “Eat like Flintstone”. Like the pork ribs, this was also finger-sucking good. I thought the lamb shank was a little dry and chewy, but I love the flavour of lamb. We don’t really cook lamb shanks at home, so this was a treat for us. The chips were a little floppy but seasoned well, and they tasted great dipped in the gravy. Good gravy must also be magical, like hot crispy batter and ketchup on bland sausages!
I went to buy us a drink, got a little side-tracked and bought us a Yellow Brick for $6.00. The Yellow Brick is really a cardboard box with a carry handle which comes with a fresh West Australian orange (actually, we had two in our Brick) and pear, a mini muffin (it smelled like apple), a sweet baby carrot from the Carrot Association and a Fruit and Veg counter (with a little chart on it so you can mark down how much fruit and vegetables you eat in a week) from the Department of Health. You also get a Yellow Brick Passport (the card that says “Follow the Yellow Brick Road…”), which entitles you to six special free samples in the Woolworth’s Fresh Food Pavilion. In addition to those 6 freebies there are plenty of other free goodies to sample in the Pavilion. And so after every drop of meat, onion, chips and gravy had been eaten, we headed over to the Woolworth’s Pavilion.
Our 6 freebie samples were: a 110 ml pack of 100% Harvey Fresh orange juice, a sizzling sausage on a stick from the Australian Meat Industry Council, a really sweet and sugary biscuit (cookie) from Guides (as in Girl Guides) Australia, a juicy strawberry from Berry Sweet, a freshly barbecued mushroom from BBQ Mushrooms and a pink lady apple from the Western Australian Fruit Growers’ Association. I wasn’t able to take photos of every sample because 1) Jac had enthusiastically chomped into them before I could get my camera out (I really didn’t mind- it was nice to see her enjoy herself!) and 2) it was really REALLY crowded in the pavilion, and taking photos was very difficult. I did manage to take a few photos though. This was our sample barbecued mushroom, which had been cooked with olive oil and garlic. Very tasty.
The mushroom girls were kept busy – as you can see – heads down working.
In addition to a lovely juicy, plump strawberry sample, we also got to eat more free strawberry samples and got a couple of free berry tattoos for Jac’s nephew and niece.
The chocolate covered strawberries looked very good. I didn’t think the strawberries and cream looked as appetising, but that’s because I’d tucked into free fresh strawberries. Somehow strawberries squished into a plastic container didn’t look very appetising.
It is definitely worth checking out the Woolworth’s pavilion. In addition to the Yellow Brick samples, we got to try other stuff, including apple honey cider from the Honey Stand, free pieces of apple, free Brownes Lite yoghurt (passionfruit flavour, which was delicious!) and bread dipped in olive oil from the Olive Growers’ Association Stand. There were free sugar-free milk and dark chocolate samples too, but we didn’t get to try them because the stall was a little too crowded at the time. At the Golden Eggs stand we scored egg recipe cards and stickers that said “Get Laid in WA” (heh). At the Potatoes stand we scored potato recipe cards and fridge magnets. There was also food for sale, including chicken kebabs, prawns on skewers and corn fritters.
On the subject of freebies, we also went to the Dairy Fresh Pavilion after the Woolworth’s one, and scored heaps of free tastings there too, including ice-cold Harvey Fresh lactose-free milk (which Jac didn’t like, but I loved), Masters Mocha and Chocolate flavoured milk samples, a new flavoured Yogo (I can’t remember what it was called, lime or grime something – it was actually very strange), Drinking Yoghurt, Connoisseur vanilla bean ice cream – this was the best freebie. The sample cups were so generously filled I thought people had bought them! I was chuffed when I realised they were free! Throughout the afternoon we scored free samples everywhere we went. In the Commercial Pavilion, Jac got to sample peach wine, plum wine and apple wine, and blueberry flavoured Roc candy. We both scored free sample Moreish chocolate covered caramel peanuts, various chilli sauces from The Chilli Factory, Vegie Chips and nectarine fruit leather. In the Geraldton pavilion Jac also sampled different flavoured olives. We paid $2 and shared 4 free samples of Little Creatures beer, on tap! And of course, all through this I had my earphones plugged in, listening to the footy! Couldn’t ask for anything better, really! (And of course, the Eagles won, which was just fantastic!)
But the hands-down best food item of the day for me was corn on the cob from the Hot Buttered Corn stand. The stand was very busy. There were two queues of people waiting patiently to be served. When I got in line there were at least five or six people ahead of me, and very soon after there were another five or six people waiting behind me. There was a guy peeling the corn, spearing them with sticks and putting them in a big pot to cook, and another guy and a woman serving the hoards of corn-hungry folk. They could’ve probably done with another person serving. It really is torture waiting in line, as the whole time, this voiceover keeps playing, complete with corny (hahaha) banjo twanging – I can’t remember the exact words, but it’s something like “Hot buttered corn, freshly picked and cooked then smothered in garlic, herb or chilli butter…” and it just keeps repeating over and over, making you want that hot buttered corn even more!
Jac wanted her corn with garlic butter. I was tempted to have mine butterless, because at home I always eat my corn without any butter – I reckon if it’s sweet and fresh it doesn’t need any butter at all – but as I stood there with the voiceover pounding into my brain, I decided I would have plain butter so at least then I could at least say I had eaten HOT BUTTERED CORN. You could have plain butter, butter with salt and pepper, or, as the voiceover told us, garlic butter, herb butter or chilli butter. By the time I got to the front of the queue my brain was mooshy with thoughts of flavoured butters and corn and my mouth wasn’t working properly. So when the lady asked me what I wanted, I said clearly, “One with garlic butter please, and one with herb – I mean, plain butter please.” It really was my own fault for flubbing my order, so when I realised she was rolling my corn in the herb butter, really REALLY rolling it so it was liberally coated and glistening with herb butter, I didn’t say anything. I’d waited so long I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted my HOT BUTTERED CORN!
It was delicious. The herb butter was surprisingly tasty. I had been worried that a flavoured butter would overpower the corn flavour, but it didn’t. The corn was so amazingly juicy – corn juice literally burst out with every bite. Jac got me in the eye with corn juice a few times! The butter dripped onto the ground as we ate but there was so much butter coating the corn it didn’t matter as far as getting our money’s/flavour’s worth. A lady walking past snorted: “Huh – $3.50 for corn? No way!” but it was so sooooooooooo worth it. Best corn ever, I’m not joking! If you like corn on the cob, definitely try the corn from this stall.
It was a very long day, and we were exhausted by the end of it. But it was great. I hope the BBQ pork ribs and hot buttered corn will be at the Show in five years’ time, when we go again!
This was a very long post! I’m exhausted all over again! It’s time for bed, as I have to go to uni tomorrow. Friends and family can log in at Flickr and see a few extra shots featuring Jac (see her eating those pork ribs!).