Lot 100: quality dining, carefully sourced produce, prices most pubs struggle to match

An ambitious Hills enterprise combines a cellar door for five leading beverage makers with a restaurant and pizzeria, writes Simon Wilkinson

Lot 100 - quality dining, carefully sourced produce

The great barn of a dining room and cellar door in which we sit is aligned meticulously to avoid direct sunlight and cool naturally. The waste water from the brewery across the way is recycled to irrigate an orchard and vegetable garden, among other uses. The spent grain is encased in praline, ground up and sprinkled over the chocolate cremeux and cherries that make up one of the desserts.

Sustainability and environmental impacts are at the heart of every decision taken at Lot 100 and its beverage-producing partners. But I suspect many of the hundreds and hundreds of visitors to this groundbreaking site in the hills outside of Nairne are too concerned with munching pizza, sucking down a coldie and finding a shady spot out on the lawn for a picnic rug to take all that much notice.

Sprouts with laredo and pangrattato at Lot 100

Those who do care need only take a tour with Toby Kline, the chief advocate and linchpin for a project that incorporates, in no particular order, Mismatch Brewing (beer), Adelaide Hills Distillery (gin and other spirits), VNTLPR (wine), Ashton Valley Fresh (juices) and Hills Cider Co. The first two make their booze in the huge production shed out the back; all are available for tasting and sales at the bar.

Lot 100 in Nairne. Photo: Naomi Jellicoe

Even in its infancy, Lot 100 is inspiring. Just wait until the fruit trees and vegetable patches are established, until winter rains green up the surrounding slopes and fill the dam, until the complete, holistic vision for the place comes to fruition.

Meanwhile, the vast expanse of seating inside, the two decks and the courtyard out back are already filling on weekends, with minimal marketing and no signs to direct travellers to the right road.

Feeding the masses is an unlikely duo of chefs: Tom Bubner, best known for taming the twin wood ovens at Pizza e Mozzarella, and Shannon Fleming, head chef alongside Jock Zonfrillo at Orana until opting for a more grounded life with his family in the Hills nearly two years ago.

Lot 100 in Nairne. Photo: Naomi Jellicoe

They each show their colours at different points in a menu that, like the drink selection, should offer something for everyone.

The four varieties of pizza, apparently, are doing a roaring trade. An antipasto selection makes an easy snack, perhaps with a Hills-style negroni. And there is just enough choice among the smalls, pasta and fire-pit meats to build into a satisfying afternoon graze.

Staff, many of them locals, are well-briefed and comfortable at the table. Details, such as the Laguiole cutlery and glazed plates, are spot on.

So are delicate folds of raw kingfish, super fresh and sliced just thick enough to give them a rewarding bite. They have been drizzled with a vivid green leek oil and topped with wild fennel fronds and cherry cheeks (both roasted and pickled), an unusual addition that works when used in the right proportions.

Even better are Port Lincoln sardine fillets, grilled until their skins have blistered and charred but the flesh above remains supple and true to its distinct flavour. They are laid on a sauce of smoky squished tomato. As regular readers might note, I’m slightly obsessed with the little fish and they don’t get much better than this.

Baked gnocchi

“The Neighbour’s Sprouts” makes a good sales pitch but these halved buds lack any real flavour – even with wisps of transparent lardo and a scattering of toasted crumbs – perhaps because they aren’t at their best in summer.

Other plates are less elaborate and built for comfort. A bowl of lightweight potato gnocchi in a simple tomato sauce are blanketed in bubbling, molten fontina cheese from Hills producer Section 28.

Pork belly is rolled up with minced herbs and garlic, porchetta style, cooked over fire on a rotisserie and finished in the wood oven where the crackling puffs up. Three hefty slices are taken across the Mediterranean with a big dollop of romesco sauce, as well as a bed of cavolo nero to balance all that rich porky goodness.

Kingfish with cherries and wild fennel

After an extended traipse around the property, we can fit in a spoonful or two of the chocolate and cherries, as well as a more restrained choice of roasted stone fruit segments, Woodside buffalo curd and roasted hazelnuts.

This is quality dining, using carefully sourced produce, at prices most pubs would struggle to match. No wonder they have 400-plus bookings for today. Is it sustainable? You wouldn’t bet against them.

LOT 100

68 Chambers Rd, Hay Valley,
7077 2888, lot100.com.au

CHEFSTom Bubner, Shannon Fleming

FOODContemporary, pizzas

ANTIPASTO $8-$12 SMALL $15-$19 MAINS $18-$28 DESSERT $12

DRINKS Take your pick. Tasting flights
of wine, beer, gin, cider and fruit juices are offered by the partners in Lot 100. Also beer on tap, wine by the glass.

OPENLUNCH Thu-Sun

SCORE 15/20

Orchardist Ralph Ceravolo, gin maker Sacha La Forgia, brewer Leigh Morgan and cider maker Toby Kline at their Lot 100 brewery and distillery in Nairne. Photo: Naomi Jellicoe