LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
HOUSED IN AN HISTORIC BUILDING IN WILLOW TREE, NSW, THIS FAMILY-RUN CAFÉ AND GOURMET GROCERY IS A SHOWCASE FOR LOCAL PRODUCE.
GROWING UP ON the Liverpool Plains in northern NSW, the village of Willow Tree was the centre of Debbie Shaw’s world. Raised on a cropping property nearby, Debbie, now 61, attended the local primary school and shopped with her mother at the village’s one general store.
“Back then, this place was called Boland’s and you could get just about everything here,” recalls Debbie. “It was a grocer, butcher, haberdasher and a general anything and everything store. Willow Tree was much busier in the 1950s and ’60s and there was a post office, a newsagent, a bakery, a bank and a police station down the road. But the village is on the rise again with the inn across the road, and now us.”
Debbie is matriarch of The Plains Pantry, which is part café, part gourmet grocer. Situated in the same historic building Debbie recalls from childhood, it makes an inviting travellers’ rest, with cane lounges out the front and ornate ceiling ironwork inside, located between Quirindi and Murrurundi on the New England Highway.
The building had been purchased, then restored and renovated by nearby Colly Creek Station owners, Charles and Cheryl Hanna. The couple, who were also responsible for giving a new lease of life to the Willow Tree Inn and its established award-winning restaurant Graze, approached Debbie and husband David in mid 2015.
“David and I had run a wholesale fruit and vegetable shop in Quirindi for many years and actually supplied Charles with produce for the inn, which is across the road,” says Debbie. “He came to see us one day and said that he was >
thinking about doing something with the old general store and wondered, would we be interested.”
And so, The Plains Pantry opened in December 2015 and has become very much a Shaw family concern. The couple’s children Kylie, Hannah and Matt, who’d grown up helping out in the fruit and vegetable shop, were instrumental in establishing the thriving, one-stop, upmarket pit stop.
“We always wanted a nice, easy general store feel and to offer milk, papers and bread to the locals,” says Hannah, an occupational therapist-turned-providore. “Because of our position on the highway, part of our vision was also to make it a really welcoming place to stop to grab a coffee, have a home-cooked brekkie or lunch and see what our local area has to offer in terms of produce.”
David’s home-cooked gourmet pies have become eternal crowd-pleasers — especially his red wine and beef variety, made with meat supplied by Colly Creek Station.
The focus on local, seasonal fresh produce continues in the gourmet grocery. The family recently introduced The Plains Pantry’s own brand with a granola by Hannah and chutneys by David. You can also find oranges from Gunnedah and huge blinking sunflowers, which the region’s fertile farmland is famous for. Other local fare includes jams from the Liverpool Plains Produce Company, smoked trout from Arc-en-ciel Trout Farm near Nundle and cheeses from Hunter Belle Cheese Factory. Awarding-winning local Dobson’s Distillery has its gin and whisky on the shelves, and there is an array of boutique ciders from New England Cider Co.
“We love showing what the clever producers are making and growing around our area, and we use all their local products in the café side of things, too, so people can come in, taste and then take some produce away with them.”
The Plains Pantry, New England Highway, Willow Tree, NSW, (02) 6747 1348, theplainspantry.com.au