The Rose & Crown Olde English Pub brings a slice of old England to Palmerston North's Main Street. It's built around the simple pleasures of a proper local: relaxed, quality dining, more than 30 different local and imported beers, live sport on the big screen, and a quiet corner by the open fires when you just want a slow pint.
The kitchen serves a full pub menu seven days a week, from beer-battered tarakihi fish and chips and bangers and mash to a beef and Guinness stew, creamy seafood chowder and lunchtime sandwiches on toasted tiger bread. Daily specials are chalked up on the blackboard, and everything is ordered at the bar, the way a good pub should be.
You'll find seating for 100 inside and 30 outside, and the doors open from 11am till late, seven days. The pub sits in the terrace end car park at 743 Main Street — Palmerston North's only real local, as they proudly say.
On Main Street in Palmerston North Central sits the Rose & Crown Olde English Pub, a local that trades in the simple pleasures: a proper pint, hearty plates, open fires and live sport on the big screen. The team calls it Palmerston North's only real local, and after an evening in front of the fire with a pour from a list of more than 30 local and imported beers, it's a claim that's easy to understand.
The pub describes itself as offering relaxed, quality dining, and the kitchen backs that up with a full pub menu served seven days a week. Whether you come for the meals the Rose & Crown has become famous for, for the big screen, or just for a quiet beer, the idea is the same — some of the charm of old England, without any fuss.
The menu reads like a love letter to British pub classics done with New Zealand produce. Bangers and mash pairs pure beef sausages with colecannon mash and a pea and onion gravy. The beef and Guinness stew takes rump and slow cooks it in Guinness gravy until tender, serving it over that same colecannon with garlic bread. And the fish and chips — the benchmark of any good pub — uses fresh beer-battered tarakihi fillets with salad and fries.
Seafood gets generous treatment too. There's a creamy seafood chowder stacked with prawns and tarakihi and topped with garlic half shell mussels, and a seafood basket loaded with battered mussels, fresh tarakihi, crabsticks, squid rings and crumbed prawn cutlets. Starters run from garlic bread and beer-battered green lip mussels to golden crumbed Thai fish cakes and stuffed mushrooms, plus an entrée platter that serves four.
Beyond the classics you'll find butter chicken and creamy Thai chicken curry on jasmine rice, chicken satay, Asian beef and Cajun chicken salads, chicken, bacon and mushroom fettucine, chicken parmigiana, and hearty all-day plates like the all day brekkie and a free range ham steak with grilled pineapple.
Lunchtime has its own section, served from 11:30am to 2pm: a BLT and a steak sandwich on toasted tiger bread, a housemade lamb burger with mint jelly, a chicken and bacon sandwich drizzled with aioli, and eggs benedict with your choice of streaky bacon, smoked salmon or mushrooms. Snacks and extras cover fries, chunkies topped with grilled ham and cheese, nachos with chilli beans or chilli mince, and toasted sandwiches.
Everything here is built around being a local. There's seating for 100 inside and another 30 outside, so there's room whether you're settling in for a match on the big screen or ducking in for a quick lunch. When the weather turns, the open fires do their part.
You order at the bar, the way a proper pub works, and daily specials are chalked on the blackboard alongside the printed menu. The pub opens 7 days from 11am until late, with the kitchen serving lunch from 11:30am to 2pm and dinner from 5:30pm to 9pm.
If you want to lock in a table, note that reservations are taken by phone only on (06) 355 3660 — the contact form on the website is for general enquiries. Gift vouchers are available too, if you're shopping for someone who would rather have a parmigiana and a pint than another pair of socks.
The Rose & Crown sits at 743 Main Street, Palmerston North, in the terrace end car park, postcode 4414. Whether it's a long lunch, a dinner with friends or a quiet pint by the fire, this Olde English pub makes a strong case for being exactly what it says it is: Palmerston North's only real local.