Do you reckon Grumpy is green? Or the green belongs to Grumpy?
Either way, Grumpy is a environmentally friendly bloke, and likes to keep his carbon footprint as small as possible. His menu is entirely vegetarian, with all ingredients originating from Victoria and whilst he doesn't promise it, he tries to be organic. When it comes beer and wine, he's got a generous collection, again all from Victoria (without a VB in sight!). I was quite amazed scanning through the list, I didn't realise how spoilt we were for microbreweries!
I had read about Grumpy's years ago, but for some reason I suppose since it tends to stay a little low on the radar, I hadn't thought of the place until I randomly saw it on urbanspoon and thought it looked awfully familiar...
I essentially decided the next day Brad and I were going to have lunch there.
Grumpy's is definitely a pub, humble and unpretentious from the outside, it's dark, but cosy, with space for a spot of live music and a nice little mezzanine area littered with well loved couches.
Which is where we decided to settle down and stay warm after we ordered our food and drink from the bar. I got the coldstream cider, which is beautiful, rich and sweet. Not to mention fairly alcoholic at 7%.
The food took a little bit to get to us, but was brought up apologetically, being informed that their kitchen got flooded! Poor things.
The food still came out lovingly warm though! I decided to go with the GLUTEN FREE (yey!) roasted vegetable focaccia with feta and pesto. My first thought upon seeing it, was, well, that's a lot of bread. I think I could live with a little less bread, but the vegetables were warm and quite teasty. The fetta was quite strong for those who may not like it, but I'm all about the cheese. Still, I couldn't help but feel that in the bread vs. vegetable ratio, the vegetables might've been a tiny bit stingy...or it might just be case of visual trickery since the bread was quite substantial...
Brad couldn't help be intrigued by, and went with the crumbed eggplant parmigiana served with handcut chips. That's right, no meat here remember? I only had a small bite of the eggplant parma but it was soft and very lightly crumbed giving it a nice texture. The chips were thick, chunky and good.
Although we really didn't need to get them (I was SO full!), we also got a side of stuffed button mushrooms with a Parmesan crust. They were served in the most charming ceramic bowl with a lid to keep them nice and toasty. When that lid was opened though, oh the cheese, it smelled like a fondue fest. Delicious. If there was stuffing I didn't really taste it, but the combination of mushroom and warm cheese was just so immensely satisfying as the rain continued to fall outside that I was still perfectly content.
I reckon Grumpy does green quite well, I'm quite curious to come back and try some of the other share dishes, maybe swing by one of these evenings and see how Grumpy might think to entertain me, they apparently have trivia on Wednesday night's which sound like awful fun and well, I'm kinda hooked on that Coldstream apple cider....
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