delicious.100: Pakenham’s The Lakeside Mill is one of Melbourne’s best restaurants.

Pakenham’s Lakeside Mill offers city smarts at fair prices.

The Lakeside Mill’s rump cap with kohlrabi. Pictures: Nicole Cleary

YOUNG gun chef Jake Kellie (a recent Australian Young Chef of the Year) is taking the path less travelled, swapping the city for the far southeast. And that’s very much Pakenham’s gain, because this smart bistro with upstairs bar that also does breakfast on weekends along with the full degustation extravaganza at night, champions producers from the region with city smarts at fair prices.

Though he’s a dab hand on the grill — there’s a good line in Gippsland steaks served with celeriac remoulade — Kellie’s cooking comes to fore through the five-course tasting menu that begins with great selection of snacks — a prawn mousse-filled zucchini flower, perhaps, or salt-baked beetroot and butter — and ends with warm-centred doughnut petit fours.

The snacks.

In between there might be rump with kohlrabi and onion, or garlic butter-drizzled fish with sea succulents, or mussels swimming in roasted roo broth of deft depth, all showing deference to produce with the right amount of hot-right-now trend.

The apple dessert.

It’s bold, unique; a boon for the area that’s rightfully attracting those in the know from much further afield.

Must eat dish: rump cap with kohlrabi

THE LAKESIDE MILL

38 Lakeside Blvd, Pakenham.

Ph: 5940 8700

thelakesidemill.com.au

Cuisine: contemporary

Chef: Jake Kellie (note: Jake Kellie left the Lakeside Mill late 2016)

Price: between $41 and $80 a person for two courses, food only

Bookings: yes

Open: Wed-Fri 8.30am-3pm and 5.30pm-late, Sat-Sun 8am-late

Instagram: @thelakesidemill

This restaurant was ranked the 32nd best restaurant in Victoria in the 2016 edition of the delicious.100.