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When? - 22nd of May, 2011
Where? - The Cock ‘N’ Bull British Pub, 50 Wellington St. Launcestion, Tasmania
Price? - $19.50
Barry? - No
Website? - http://www.launcestonguinness.com.au/
Reviewers - Adam T, Kylie, Lee, M, Nikki, Shanan[/info]
Not last weekend, but the weekend before that I found myself in Tasmania - Launceston to be precise, I was whisked down south with some friends (and fellow reviewers) for 3 days of drinking at wineries, eating far too much unhealthy food and continuous ‘Nerf’ gun battles thanks to the great people at K-mart having a sale on Nerf equipment.
We were there for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, around noon on Saturday I was starting to develop an itch that only a delicious parma could scratch. I started checking the menu’s of the pubs that I passed to discover something very disturbing about Launceston … Chicken parma’s are rare as hens teeth. Lots of pubs had chicken schnitzels on the menu, but without the trademark napoli, ham and cheese that transforms a hum drum schnitzel into the ambrosia of the chickeny gods. A quick google search showed that pickings were indeed slim on Launceston’s parma front, but I had managed to secure info on a pub that had one on the menu - The Cock N Bull British Pub.
Luckily it was rather close to where we were staying, so on Sunday afternoon we loaded up our rental parma bus (an 8 seater Chrysler Voyager) and headed to the Cock N’ Bull.
The Cock N Bull is a cosy british themed pub, it reminded me greatly of Pugg Mahones on Lygon street, except with British paraphernalia on the walls as opposed to the Irish stuff found at Puggs.
Downstairs was pretty busy when we arrived so we ordered our parmas and headed upstairs, which was virtually deserted. The friendly staff found the footy on the TV for us, we ventured downstairs to slip a cheeky $20 into the pokies and before long our chicken landed in front of us.
If you look at the above photo I’m sure you can see this parma’s main problem already, the outside edge of nude schnitzel spent a little too much time under the grill and ended up burnt to a crisp, not the best way to start. However once you got past the burnt rim the rest of the parma was pretty good, decent chicken thickness with great crumb/chicken ratio (apologies for the lack of cross section, I was damn hungry and forgot to take it) The napoli was plentiful and the cheese golden brown, if it weren’t for the disappointing burnt/nude outer circle it would have been a great offering.
The chips, while hiding under the parma were plentiful however standard. The Cock n Bull did offer a variety of sauces (Tomato, BBQ, Sweet Chilli & HP) to spice them up a little so theres little to complain about, just standard chips
Much like the chips the salad was also a stock standard garden salad accompaniment, lettuce, onion, cucumber & tomato, obscured partially by the parma itself which caused some wilting by the time I dug through to it.
All in all the Cock N Bull put up a pretty decent parma that would have been better if not for the burnt edges, To be honest I was just happy to have my craving fulfilled and in the land that parma’s forgot I’ll take what I can get!
Parma - 5.5
Chips - 5.67
Salad - 6.33
Value - 6.83
Total - 5.97
The search continues…
While we are on the subject of out-of-state parmas I want to mention that a fellow parma enthusiast has been inspired by us at Parma Daze to start ParmaRama, taking up the search for Sydney’s best chicken parmigiana. I look forward to seeing what he discovers, be sure to check it out!