Brunch at the Cock Tavern

Super cute mugs!

So many food

Fritters of deliciousness

Health points!

Negative health points! But amazing!

Most filling pie ever!

On Saturday Quentin and I had a concert to go to (Vista Chino) and expected to do some drinking in the evening so we thought we better have a hearty brunch. Also we had no good brunch foods so had to go out (what a tragedy). We walked down North End Road which is pretty close to our house and almost went to a place called The Goose but it didn't appear to be open so we went further down and ended up at a place called the Cock Tavern.

Inside it was cute and had a bunch of tables and booths, an outside area (too cold for that but would be nice in Summer) and all sorts of random posters and pictures on the walls. It also had all sorts of random light fittings, some of them reminded me of the ones that Dad used inside the boats he was building when they didn't have power. Quentin liked all these lights.

They didn't have a huge breakfast menu but they did also have grazing plates and mains available. Thinking that grazing plates would be small portions we thought we would get a few of those and Quentin really wanted this pie so we thought we would get that as well. Bad idea. Portions were not small at all and we ended up with enough food for about four people!

It was really good food though! I really wanted the triple cooked chips so we got those and they were really good, although as Quentin pointed out they weren't as crispy as you would expect. They still tasted amazing though with a light and fluffy inside and they weren't greasy at all which is awesome, that is my pet peeve with fries, when you can see the oil sort of dripping off, it is just too much!

We also ordered 'roasted butternut and balsamic tomatoes' which ended up being a salad with just these two things and a big bunch of rocket. It was really nice though and we needed it with all the other food we ordered! I must say though, butternut has nothing on normal pumpkin, it has way less flavour and doesn't cook into nice soft gooeyness like pumpkin.

We also got some zucchini and sweetcorn fritters which came with a tomato salsa. The fritters were really good, they had a slight flavour of pancakes but were full of veges which was really nice. I ate them with the salsa and some mayo and it went together so well. I think I may have even managed a whole one!

The final thing we ordered was a mushroom and stilton pie which came with root vegetable mash and kale. The pie was amazing. I am not usually the biggest fan of mushrooms but man this was good! The pastry was the right amount of crispy and soggy (reminiscent of an Irvine's from the pie warmer) and the filling was super super tasty, I think there were some red onion and leeks in there as well. The mash was also amazing and came with some delicious gravy which is basically one of my favourite things to eat ever. The kale was meh. I don't think the dish needed it and no kale will ever be as good as the kale salad that Jean made that one time. Quentin and I both agreed that if we went back we could just get the pie and share and that would be enough.

I felt super guilty about the amount of food we left behind but we did sit there for over an hour trying to eat as much as possible! The place was great, good service, great food, heaps of vege options and also good coffee! They can have a 4.5 and I will totally go back, but order less food next time!