The timber-lined public bar has lofty ceilings to stop it feeling too close on a balmy arvo, and out the back there’s a cathedral-like atrium filled with house plants. They’re thinking global and sourcing local.Īnd aside from anything else, it’s a good place to kick back and shoot the shit. It’s a real grab bag of influences: they’re putting taleggio and salami on their parma, mac’n’cheese with their pork chop and Persian fetta with their cuttlefish. You can get fried saganaki cheese with rockmelon and pickled watermelon, the ubiquitous burrata on a bed of heavily dressed tomatoes, and mussels in a green curry sauce. Staying off the beaten track is what they do here. They have it on the snacks menu, but it’s a full sized meal with a hot, soft roti on the side, and an even heartier repast if you add a side of rice for two dollars. A pub meal doesn’t not necessitate Anglo comfort food here, because they are slow cooking beef in a thick, fragrant, Mauritian-style curry sauce that’s spiked with whole fennel seeds, sweet onions, fresh curry leaves and coriander. well, that’s another story entirely, because the Woodlands Hotel is also doing the best pub curry in town. It’s more Victorian than a VFL premiership in here.Īnd you can bet your bootstraps that their local focus extends to the kitchen where they’re using all Victorian produce. The bottled beer list widens their territory, adding beers from Two Birds, Three Ravens, Hawkers, Edge, Bridge Rd, Hargreaves Hill and La Sirène to the hit list, and the wine list deep-dives on drops from Mornington, Yarra, Pyrenees, Strathbogie Ranges, and Heathcote. On our visit the tap list is primed with a house lager, a pale from Cavalier in Derrimut and a raspberry wheat beer from Bareside’s Boatrocker, but we fall hard for the mango gose from Footscray’s Hop Nation that has all the fruity sweetness on the nose of a Daiquiri, but that bracing savoury salinity you get with this German-style beer. Seriously, these guys are walking the walk when it comes to local produce. It might look like a tiny German castle, or maybe an elaborate British firehouse, but inside the Woodlands Hotel it’s an all Victorian party, all the time.
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