63: Sausage Roll Scorecard — Exciting times south of Perth!

25 August 2024

Nicole and I have now started exploring the Southwest of WA, south of Perth. We’ve heard extremely good things about the region and are very much looking forward to seeing it. And, if the first week or so is anything to go by, the region has definitely brought its A-game for sausage rolls!

Seagulls Bakery (Rockingham)

On a day trip south of Mandurah, we visited Seagulls Bakery in Rockingham. Nicole had undertaken some excellent research and plugged the address into Apple Maps. Nicole’s research was well rewarded with an excellent sausage roll offering!

Specifically …

• Looked really tasty
• Perfect temperature
• Excellent texture
• Great taste
• Rating — 8.9 out of 10, putting it second overall!

So, what a fabulous start to our Southwest WA explorations!

Kent St Bakery (Busselton)

On our way to Margaret River, we stopped for a walk around Busselton. We’ll be back to more fully explore Busselton later in September, but for now we thought we’d check out the sausage roll action.

Wandering the main street we found the Kent St Bakery. It looked very popular, plus sold coffee — a bonus on such a wet, cold and windy day. I got a sausage roll, and Nicole tried their vegetable pasty.

If we thought Rockingham was a good start to the sausage roll tasting of Southwest WA, then Busselton lifted the bar even higher with a fantastic sausage roll offering!

• Great appearance — although my photo doesn’t do it justice
• Great size — it was huge!
• Beautiful crisp pastry
• Fantastic taste — you know this when you involuntarily start nodding your head while you’re eating
• Nice texture, including onion chunks
• Nice and hot, but not too hot — great on a cold day
• The accompanying coffee was very good (doesn’t hurt)
• I was thinking of making this offering equal first — but gave an extra 0.05 for me feeling crook (and so my taste buds may have been a bit dulled) and needing a hot bakery item to lift my spirits, plus it was our 27th wedding anniversary!
• Nicole also rated her vegetable pastie as her best bakery item thus far – so an extra 0.05 on to the score for that
• Rating — 9.1 out of 10!

We have a new champion folks!

I also did the right thing and told the owner that they had just gone to number 1 on my SRS. While she hid her joy very well, she did appreciate the feedback and said she would pass it on to the baker. We’ll definitely have to return here at some stage.

Kingston Bakery Cafe (Margaret River)

Nicole and I are staying 4 nights in a very nice hotel in Margaret River for our 27th wedding anniversary. While the concept was a very good one, we’re both unfortunately pretty crook. Nicole started feeling sick with a bad flu in Perth, but it got worse when we arrived in Mandurah. Then, the day before we were leaving Mandurah for Margaret River, I started getting sick.

We had booked a winery bus tour for the next day (Saturday), but I didn’t like my chances of being well enough by then. We tried to shift our booking to the Sunday, but there was no room that day, so we had to make it Monday. To cater for this, we extended our original 3-night booking to a fourth night. As it stands, I’ll be doing well to make it tomorrow, but am feeling a little better today.

Anyway, with the rain easing off a little today, we walked the main street of Margaret River. It’s a lovely place that reminds me a bit of Maleny. And yes, they have a bakery (two I think, but we didn’t walk that far).

In terms of their sausage roll offering:

• A nice setup and eating area, with good service
• A nice treat on a cold day
• A bit hot — but OK
• Very good taste — even with my bad taste buds with this cold
• Rating — 8.5 out of 10.

So overall, a very solid effort.

And, for those who think about only wine when they think of Southwest WA, think again — they have definitely got their sausage roll game on!

Current scorecard

*Note that where scores are tied, the sausage roll tasted first is placed highest in the list.

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