Rocky is making sausages and political jokes great again. Here he’s seen with a little sauce on his chin in reference to 13 July 2024. Photo: Supplied.
Rocky Harvey, owner of Rockstock Deli in Jindabyne, is quite a character.
He rides a horse called Jesus, sports a Super Mario moustache, and specialises in his own personal brand of what he refers to as Feral Gourmet.
Having moved to the mountains from Canberra more than 15 years ago to pursue a lifestyle based around trout fishing, camping, hunting and eating bloody good food, Rocky has carved out a lifestyle that is entirely unique to him.
When we connected for a chat, I was well aware of Rocky’s colourful side and was half expecting him to be a loose cannon, hard to pin down or make sense of.
Instead, what I found was an articulate business owner with a love for the Snowy Mountains and all things local – especially the food.
Rocky took over a cafe known as The Market in mid- 2024, keen to build upon his existing business of Euro-style smoked and cured meats,
“When we bought The Market it was more wholefoods, edging towards the vegos and vegans. By default, we’ve sort of moved away from that,” Rocky laughs as he says that all his products are meat.
The Rockstock Deli has taken over from The Market in Jindabyne. Photo: Supplied.
Renaming the cafe Rockstop Deli brought the business into a new era.
They still have some of the wholefoods, but now the cafe is dishing up an all-day menu that leans heavily into his produce and produce from the Snowy region.
I first heard of Rocky from Amy Slocombe at Snowy Mountains Fermentation. She supplies Rocky with the fermented produce that features in every single one of his toasted sandwiches.
Building an entire menu line around a local producer is the kind of commitment to local that makes a difference in a region like the Snowy Mountains, and Amy is among a list of around 15 local suppliers that Rocky engages.
Rocky shares that many of the producers are running their businesses as side gigs, which is how he got his start producing smoked and cured meats.
“I’m really big on local; until we got into this business, I didn’t even really realise how many different little local suppliers were out there,” Rocky explains.
“It’s a tough business environment in the mountains; it’s very seasonal, and the climate is tough for growing, so I think supporting other local businesses is really special.”
Rocky’s smoked trout is one of his best-selling products and is a perfect partnership of local businesses, with Rocky smoking fish supplied by Snowy Mountains Trout, a local trout farm located below the Blowering Dam wall in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains catchment in Tumut.
“The trout are raised locally and cured and smoked locally; people really dig that,” says Rocky.
Rocky took over Jindabyne’s The Market and has taken it in a new direction. Photo: Rocky Harvey.
Rocky also incorporates gin botanicals from the nearby Wildbrumby Distillery into his meat production, explaining that many of the spices in the gin botanicals, like the coriander seeds and juniper berries, are used in traditional European cured meat production.
“I toast the Wildbrumby botanicals and crust the outside of the biltong with that. I also use that on the capicola, the pancetta and the bresaola and I flavour the Jagerwurst sausages with it.”
Rocky credits Jodie Evans, owner and chef of Crackenback Farm and Guesthouse, for making all of the cakes and cookies and a brisket meat pie that they sell in the deli, which Rocky says is amazing.
“The pies are a little pricey, but they’re incredible; there are no commercial mixes and binders and the crap that they pad commercially baked goods out with, which makes them taste like sawdust.”
Rocky recently complicated his life a little more by making his own sausage rolls and pasties.
“It frustrates me as a foodie that there’s so much poor-quality food out there; you can’t buy a decent friggin sausage roll. They aren’t that hard to make.”
Rocky Harvey lives his feral gourmet lifestyle in the Snowy Mountains. Photo: Supplied.
Rocky jokes that he might have bitten off more than he could chew with the sausage rolls, which are running off the shelves and requiring more and more of his time to keep in stock.
Rocky’s wicked sense of humour is never very far from the surface as he talks me through his range of sausages, which includes his recent “Big Beautiful Bangers”, a tongue-in-cheek Trump reference. Rocky laughs that the American president gives him endless material.
Rocky’s now heading towards his off-season, the warmer months. He’d love to see more people frequent the mountains outside of ski season and I think without knowing it, Rocky, with his passion for fine, local food, may have given us a reason to do just that.
Rockstop Deli is located at 6/141 Snowy River Avenue, Jindabyne, and is open seven days a week. You can keep up with his Trump puns on Facebook.
