Pizza, pasta, steak, beer and cider – Lot 100 has got the lot

Lot 100 is a smart new restaurant with Hills views, switched on staff and a menu the pleases – until right near the end.

Switched-on staff help make Lot 100 restaurant a Hills hit

The views have it, before we even spy the menu.

This smart new restaurant and multi-cellar door is all mod lines and glass. We’re looking out past a giant deck to rolling orchard territory to the south, and to the north, lawns, trees, rocks, umbrellas, and a big pizza oven is where groups and families are gathering.

The eye-popping Lot 100 is a showcase for Mismatch Brewing, Hills Cider, Adelaide Hills Distillery, Vinteloper and Ashton Valley Fresh. Cool young crowds are milling around the long bar, with beer flights, and tasting the boutique drops.

Kingfish, cherries, lemon and wild fennel at Lot 100

At our table, a switched-on waiter is reeling off today’s range of meats from the open kitchen’s fire pit, with plenty of detail. She is part of a keen, knowledgeable crew. Nice touches include fresh plates between shared courses.

There also is antipasto, pizza or pasta, and our fave “smalls”. We share all five.

I like the brussels sprouts, firm and bright with lardo, a crumbly pangrattato and a dash of vermouth sweetness. A ball of burrata is right on trend, the smooth mozza cheesy encasing creamy to stringy stracciatella that’s a lovely foil to tart green tomatoes. Garlicky potato croquettes are too moreish and the local fish is exceptional, one a pretty plate of raw kingfish scattered with wild cherries and fennel fronds, the other roasty toasty sardines nestled in charred tomato juices under a canopy of broad-leaf parsley.

The garlic potato croquettes

From the pit, we choose flank steak, simply done, perfectly pink and doused with a picante salsa verde. There must be a kitchen garden nearby.

Gnocchi lovers will be impressed, although beware multiple pasta choices because the tomato-based sauces taste much the same.

Port Lincoln sardines and charred tomato

A truly dark bittersweet chocolate mousse with cherries steeped in Rosso upstages the the tiramisu with scant and uneven coffee, and “grilled stone fruits” actually hard and stone cold.

Too much hiphop music through lunch only changes as we leave, but we bump into friends here for tastings, so stop again, outside, where it’s fun watching their little lad romping the lawns.