Away is a chance to try something different, maybe for lunch (a dee-licious sandwich isn't hard to pack) and definitely for dinner. Like, maybe this sort of pizza: white wine chicken with napoli, mozzarella, spinach, leek, cracked pepper, roasted mushrooms and port salute cheese from Clogs in Bendigo
We did bypass this opportunity (in the main street of Bendigo); although if you had hollow-legged children, it could have been a useful option.
The gourmet pizza was good enough to have another one from the same place the next night: roasted pumpkin with napoli sauce, spinach, roasted capsicum, goats cheese and mozzarella.
Two nights of good pizza meant something different was needed for the third night. Noodles! A Combo Box from Noodle Box includes: thin egg noodles, roast pork, lean beef, chicken, prawn, shrimp and Asian vegetables in oyster sauce. Yum! There's a local branch of this franchise, I've since learned, so it will be a future destination for sure.
I won't mention lunch at the Bendigo art gallery's cafe, which was the most tasteless frittata I've ever had the misfortune to encounter (I took to vainly adding salt in search of some flavour). The water for the tables was warm from the tap in a bottle hot from the dishwasher (on a day when it was nearly 40degC outside, hot hot hot - they had no ice) and the service indifferent. So forget about that.
BUT: on the way home I had the pleasure of a sushi train lunch with the (charming) Shopping Sherpa , after an expertly-guided tour of her doll house exhibition (of which more in another post). I didn't take any photos of lunch, but she did. They're here.
And to tell the truth, when you're travelling for hundreds of kilometres, it's good to have the fast food option of Subway , for decent nutrition and the crunch of fresh salad; also, although I don't drink coffee, a McCafé may be the only place to get decaf cappuccino in small country towns (on the main road in-transit food places, anyway). We did notice that the coffee brands in Victorian cafs are quite different to those in NSW; seemed like a very diverse market. One particularly good coffee place in Bendigo is the Wholesome Bean. Free trade, different varieties of coffee, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place that smelled fabulous. The menu looked good too, only it wasn't lunchtime. But they had decaf.
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4 comments:
Oh dear about the Art Gallery cafe.
I feel terrible after recommending it. It seems they were suffering the same indifference virus as the McCafe in Wellington NSW! I asked for a refund for my drink there(and a little discussion, got it)
I'm bemused about Noodle Box though...they're everywhere here. Funny what you assume is common.
And drinking coffee in Victoria is somewhere between an art form and a religion! C
Ah, not to worry. We ate well elsewhere. There seem to be only about 8 Noodle Boxes in NSW, so it's nowhere near as ubiquitous.
And I'm sure you could find NSW coffee drinkers as rabid as the Victorians - but since I don't drink coffee, I'm not especially attuned!
A shame to here about the Art Gallery Cafe experience, but on a positive note Clogs always seems to deliver a great pizza. If you are back in Bendigo at any stage there is also a great Thai restaurant off Mitchell Street at the top end.
I love the photos that you have taken of Bendigo. And as a Bendigo resident I think you have great taste in pizza! The Clogs pizzas are delicious! I have been lurking on your blog for a while and your photos of Bendigo made me leave a comment. The second hand bookshop is one of my faves too.
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