Hentley Farm – SA Weekend restaurant review

This Barossa wonderland’s boundless imagination had faded the last time we visited. More than two years on, things are changing.

The dining space at Hentley Farm restaurant, Barossa Valley

Dainty triangles of plum are lined up with the precision of a marching band atop buttery fingers of brioche. Rye tart shells looking as if they have been hammered out by an elven jeweller are loaded with glossy, marinated blackberries that conceal a secret ingredient.

Lunch at Hentley Farm has barely started and it seems that dessert might have come early. But these gorgeous, genre-defying petit four are only the start of the twists and turns in a tea party for the ages in this most Barossan of wonderlands.

Over three or so hours, ensconced in a glass-walled cube that seems to hover above the banks of Greenock Creek, a degustation built mostly of two-to-five-bite morsels shows what is possible when chefs are allowed to play by their own rules.

Plum, brioche, sour cream at Hentley Farm restaurant, Barossa Valley

Hentley’s cellar-door restaurant has for some time been one of the standard-bearers for a dining format that requires a serious commitment of money ($225 as it stands) and time. Under founding chef Lachlan Colwill, it won widespread acclaim and multiple awards, setting a high water mark for his successor, Clare Falzon. Shortly after the changeover, however, Covid intervened, the restaurant closed temporarily. A few staff moved on and illness made rostering unpredictable.

The impact of these challenges was still evident when I dined at Hentley last year. The spontaneity and boundless imagination of past visits had faded a little. Now things have settled, I’ve come to see if the wow factor has returned.

The new script begins with a glass of fizz in lounge seats at the front, a somewhat stilted prelude, before a walk through the kitchen to be introduced to a succession of young faces.

Most of them will be seen again soon enough at the table. They explain the intricacies of a dish and the provenance of key ingredients.

One of them, then, lets us know there is a hidden layer of chicken liver parfait beneath the foraged blackberries of that tart. Another arrives to pour a tumbler of stunning mint kombucha.

Blackberry and parfait tart at Hentley Farm restaurant, Barossa Valley.

Lobster, finger lime, beurre blanc.

The sequence of snacks continues. There’s a homely pocket bread to fill with sweet/sour eggplant relish. Oysters are anointed with a gentle vinaigrette flavoured with last year’s persimmons. Best of all is a prawn double-play: the tare-glazed midriff designed to roll in a sheet of daikon with a blob of XO; and the head sprinkled in a volatile Szechuan pepper and dried chilli powder that goes blow-for-blow with all that juicy gunk in the cranium. Brave stuff.

A similarly potent Japanese togarashi spice mix coats slices of raw kingfish that are submerged in a citrus and kelp ponzu. Again, big flavours but this time too much for the fish.

Lobster tail portions, dusted in finger lime powder, rest on celeriac puree, beurre blanc sauce and sea succulents, luxury fit for a Queen of Hearts. A bowl of fresh fig, raspberries and a fig leaf and ricotta sorbet once again could pass as dessert but is served mid-meal for a moment of cleansing and reflection.

Fig, raspberry and ricotta.

The darker, gamier meat of cockerel (male chicken) works wonders as a pie filling with oyster mushrooms and the woody notes of sage. The dry-ice mist, however, has had its day.

Grilled loin of kangaroo, another under-utilised protein, is seasoned in curry leaf powder, daubed with chimichurri and shrouded beneath a grilled radicchio leaf brushed with anchovy butter. The meat is sublime, the whispers of bitterness, salt and spice controlled like an orchestral movement.

Hentley’s signature yoghurt and passionfruit “egg” remains in place and signals the beginning of the proper desserts – though a roasted pumpkin ice cream with torched meringue, oats and chocolate teeters on the same sweet/savoury tightrope as some of those earlier creations.

The final trio of toasted marshmallow, blueberry jelly and peanut slice should please more devoted sugar seekers. If that beguiling bottle of shiraz has run dry, there is even mint tea. The Mad Hatter would be delighted.