delicious.100: Where to find Country Victoria’s best restaurants
SOME of Victoria’s top chefs are shunning the city for the regions — and diners are flocking to meet them. If you’re still lucky enough to be on holiday, now is the perfect time to get outta town and check out one of the state’s best country restaurants.
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IF you’re lucky enough to still be off on your Christmas holidays then a trip outside the city could very well be on the agenda.
Luckily, some of the state’s top chefs are shunning the city for the regions — and diners are flocking to meet them.
They’ve not always been easy to find, but anyone looking for quality food and drink in Victoria should be getting outta town right now and dining in country restaurants.
These restaurants are every bit as appetising and exciting as many big city diners and they are among the best regional restaurants to feature in the delicious.100 list of Victoria’s best restaurants.
delicious.100: Geelong fine diner Igni crowned No. 1
Where to go for the best French food in Melbourne
Country Victoria home to some of the state’s best restaurants
Igni
Ryan Pl, Geelong
03 5222 2266
In this fast casual world of restaurants, Igni restores faith in fine dining. The moves here are more freestyle than fussy, but this is nevertheless a place to dress up, show up and be wowed by stunning food.
Igni (Latin for “from fire”) also possesses that elusive X factor — a humble sense of self, location and an execution that’s above gimmicks and pretension.
Chef and co-owner Aaron Turner, the prodigal son of Loam fame, is back to blistering form. His fire-fuelled cooking is sharp and confident in simple yet mind-blowing combos over five or eight excellent-value courses.
Dishes are guaranteed to stick in your mind the next day, like the opening flurry of snacks — maybe grilled baby zucchini flowers containing just-cooked local mussels, and saltbush leaves dusted with vinegar powder, which take salt and vinegar chips to a whole new level.
You’ll remember, too, the charred, smoky cabbage encasing a fleshy fillet of perfectly cooked cod, all in an exquisite subtle marron sauce. Ditto the silky strands of potato noodles, twirled over a smoked pipi and topped with a glorious sunshiney yolk.
And you definitely won’t forget the honeycomb rubble under amazingly vivid onion ice cream that’s one part luxe and one part Saturday-morning Bunnings sausage sizzle. Genius.
And hope for the cheese course to be tete de moine, a treat for the eyes and the tongue with its melty layers finely shaved to resemble a carnation.
The well-priced wine list is concise but action packed, championing local labels and tending towards the natural and experimental.
All this is backed by service that carries efficient warmth, and is attentive but never onerous despite the compact size of the room.
Igni’s location in the backblocks of Geelong gives street cred (a la Melbourne’s once-gritty laneways), and it can be hard to find, but rewards are ripe for the picking.
Only in its second year, the maturity of Igni already belies its youth, offering a beautifully crafted and worthwhile experience. Fine dining has never felt so alive and relevant.
Must eat dish: Potato, yolk, pipi
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chef: Aaron Turner
Price: $$$
Bookings: Yes
Instagram: @restaurantigni
Brae
4285 Cape Otway Rd, Birregurra
03 5236 2226
As you drive through the country gates, up the sweeping dirt driveway, spying a white chef’s jacket or two among the vegie patches and herb gardens to your right, the handsome farmhouse beckoning on your left, you might wonder: could it really be worth it? The planning. The drive. The time. The expense. The anticipation? You bet.
The weight of expectation weighs even heavier on the newly anointed 44th Best Restaurant in the World, but Dan Hunter delivers a meal that’s a celebration of the seasons and, of course, the land, which is so much a part of the Brae experience, from your journey to the table to the growing and selection of the produce for the plate.
The astoundingly clever and outrageously delicious menu staples, including the iced oyster dusted with sea lettuce powder and the “parsnip and apple” dessert, are joined by a rotating celebration of Australia, which might include the simple pleasure of a tomato tarte Tatin with a slice of saucisson, or piece of pickled cucumber with green ants.
Hunter’s bold choice towards understated style continues to impress, whether in the bite of fermented daikon and acerbic muntries with a dice of calamari, a velvety sheath of lamb covering supple eggplant, or the non-alcoholic match to the multicourse meal (as a considered alternative to the classic wine pairing).
With an eclectic soundtrack that keeps the mood light and service that keeps the meal in tune, travelling back down that driveway, replete with the flavour of red flowering eucalyptus gum ice cream and stewed quandongs lingering on your tongue, you’ll question how you ever succumbed to the weight of expectation in the first place.
Must-eat: Iced oyster
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chef: Dan Hunter
Price: $$$$$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Dinner Thurs-Sat; lunch Sat-Mon
Instagram: @braerestaurant
Lake House
King St, Daylesford
03 5348 3329
If Mother Nature had a pantry, it would be the Lake House.
For 33 years, this Daylesford restaurant and getaway — under the expert guiding hand of founder and ‘culinary director’ Alla Wolf-Tasker — has been nurturing specialist provedores in central Victoria and showcasing their bounty on menus that seem almost hardwired to the seasons.
A visit to Lake House in early Spring saw head chef David Green sending out a charred onion broth heady with truffle comte; dry-aged duck nesting with beetroot, smoked potato and preserved elderberry; and peak condition vegetables — chestnuts, pumpkin, kale, artichokes — tucked into butter pastry with goat curd fondue.
Green has a special affinity for fish, netting Murray cod, trout, smoked eel and freshwater crustaceans for a delicate entree, and elevating pearl-white black kingfish (cobia) with an Asian-scented veal broth and a latticed cod cracker. Stunning.
Then there’s ‘The Apple’ for dessert, a little marvel where a sphere of eggshell fine white chocolate on Granny Smith granita hides jellied treats inside.
The service is seamless, while the cellar is one of rare depth and complexity.
Some visitors favour Lake House to savour the view, but this dining room twinkles after sundown, toasty light bouncing off gleaming surfaces and jazz tinkling in the background like water.
Must eat dish: Black kingfish, celeriac, cod cracker
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chefs: Alla Wolf-Tasker and David Green
Price: $$$
Bookings: Yes
Instagram: @lakehousedaylesford
Wickens at Royal Mail Hotel
96 Parker St, Dunkeld
03 5577 2241
With sheep and beef reared to spec on its farm and Australia’s largest restaurant garden that informs the daily menu, Dunkeld’s Royal Mail Hotel has long offered a sense of its surrounds on the plate.
But now, with a dedicated standalone space that offers sweeping views of the bush under the shadow of majestic Mount Sturgeon, the new restaurant is now a complete celebration of Australia and, finally, a world-class destination.
Locally quarried sandstone tables and soft pendant lighting add a dramatic sense of style and occasion to the restaurant that’s reached via a winding native garden path. Adding his name to the door, chef Robin Wickens is serving up a five- or eight-course menu that’s a pared back, refined statement of that garden produce shining bright.
A selection of elegant canapés — sticky carrot ‘leather’; aged kangaroo tartare on pickled onion cracker; a single radish covered in sorrel jelly — followed by white-and-green asparagus custard; a plate of smoked eel with beetroot slivers, are pre-menu openers that set the scene for showstopping fare.
An elegant simplicity to dishes, such as dry-aged Great Ocean duck served with sharp rhubarb stalks, or a piece of blue-eye dressed in kohlrabi juice, shows restraint and confidence in letting produce do the talking.
A new-found joy in celebrating Australian wines is more in keeping with the kitchen’s ethos — though the museum stock of four-figured Burgundies are still waiting for fans — while switched on service keeps that wine flowing and water topped up.
Though admittedly no one’s rushing off anywhere (unless it’s back to your garden room with views over the Grampians National Park), the five-hour meal makes for a somewhat laboured undertaking, but when there’s the sweet-savoury elegance of blackberry leaf ice cream with fennel and lemon balm to end, who’s looking at the clock?
Dunkeld’s most famous dining room has been born anew, providing yet another reason to get off the beaten track in regional Victoria.
Must eat dish: Sweetbreads on sweet bread
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chef: Robin Wickens
Price: $$$$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Dinner Wed-Sun, lunch Sat-Sun
Oakridge
864 Maroondah Hwy, Coldstream
03 9738 9900
With its glorious vista across the vines that create multi-award-winning wines, you could come to Oakridge simply for the view and leave happy. With its deep toasty, caramelised crust and the mound of thick, golden butter alongside, you could also come to Oakridge, eat the bread and also leave beaming.
But these are just two reasons to visit this sleek winery dining room, with Matt Stone’s zero-waste kitchen drawing on Yarra Valley produce to provide a menu full of equally compelling propositions.
Such as an onion tarte Tatin, sticky, golden and bittersweet, with soured cream with the unmistakeable bush walk of eucalyptus finishing a brilliant opening act. Hot-smoked eel and cool egg custard combine in a delicate, pretty broth showing a less-is-more approach is equally effective; while rainbow trout served with a sticky sauce of its bones is matched in the lick-the-plate stakes by a side of XO shaved brussels sprouts that will convert any and every sprout naysayer.
Kangaroo served with Davidson plum is such a note-perfect celebration of national pride it should stand for the anthem, while co-head chef Jo Barrett’s desserts — always a highlight — are now better than ever.
Oranges from Four Pillars down the road combine into a textural triumph of citrus — lemon curd, orange parfait, mandarin granita — while poached pears and parsnip are joined by pretzel dough for one of the most inventive, and delicious, veg-driven desserts.
Service is switched on and refreshingly friendly; wines are poured with stories of land. With that view (and bread) it all combines to create one of the best value meals not only in the Valley, but in the state.
Must eat dish: Gin orange
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chefs: Matt Stone, Jo Barrett
Price: $$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Lunch Thurs-Mon
Instagram: @oakridgewines
Doot Doot Doot at Jackalope
166 Balnarring Rd, Merricks North
03 5931 2500
It takes confidence to pair delicately sweet spanner crab with buttery mashed potato. The sort of daring confidence that is in no short supply at Jackalope, the Mornington Peninsula vineyard hotel that is redefining luxury.
Doot Doot Doot is the boutique stay’s upscale flagship restaurant, where that crab comes with a velvet cuddle of mash, the lot seasoned with furikake and bottarga to create a dish so decadent, so deft, so defiantly delicious you all but forget the ridiculous name of the restaurant you’re eating it in.
A twinkling 10,000 globe chandelier by Melbourne-based designer Jan Flook creates the surreal sensation of fermenting wine bubbling above the tables, and sets the otherworldly tone for chef Guy Stanaway’s five-course menu that is at once approachable and luxurious, quietly clever and self-assured.
Comfort comes writ large in a plate of soft pumpkin dressed in a cloud of brown butter, the sweet flesh teamed with molasses-like black garlic, crunchy saltbush and macadamia.
More simple pleasures abound, whether in a plundering of the vegetable patch served with goat’s curd and a whey vinaigrette with a waft of orange blossom, or the elegant pairing of King George whiting with a sheath of jamon serrano and a lightly dressed cos salad for crunch.
The wine list is equally considered, a selection made up exclusively of wines from small vineyards of 11 hectares or less — the size of the Willow Creek vineyard you’ll spy beyond the deck.
Restrained in pricing, a celebration the region, but also savvy enough to know when to pick the best from afar, it’s an excellent collection, served with panache.
The Jackalope hotel offers an art-heavy experience where the surreal and ideal collide, and Doot Doot Doot is an extension of the hotel’s tastefully curated, perfectly executed theatrics.
Must eat dish: Spanner crab and potato
Cuisine: Contemporary
Chef: Guy Stanaway
Price: $$$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Dinner nightly, lunch Sat-Sun
Instagram: @jackalopehotels
Provenance
86 Ford St, Beechworth
03 5728 1786
In the 1850s, the discovery of gold provoked a rush to be rich in Beechworth.
In 2017, there’s a rush to be well fed in this enchanted corner of Victoria’s north east. And many of the tourists who swell Beechworth’s streets, day and night, make a beeline for Provenance.
Michael Ryan’s fine restaurant, housed in a heritage Bank of Australasia building that was built at the height of the gold rush, beckons them with the promise of memorable Japanese-accented food, wines heavily drawn from the region, and solicitous service.
A log fire blazed on our visit, warming a rather austere dining room, and snacky starters, think grilled squid with kewpie mayo, and roasted lap cheong with pickled cucumber, paved the way for Nipponesque entrees fashioned from prime alpine ingredients. The mix included smoked kangaroo tartare with Japanese fish sauce, fried quail in a kimchi puree, and local pumpkin cooked in hazelnut oil.
Ryan’s affinity for vegetables shines in the vegetarian degustation, but you wouldn’t want to miss his Murray cod with fins of crisp skin, or pork jowl steeped in a soy milk and ginger sauce. Only a side of overcooked roasted broccoli marred our serve.
Sake can carry you through to dessert — anyone for bergamot flan with a puffed rice and genmaicha sorbet? — but you’re in Beechworth, remember. Not Japan. Surely that calls for a ‘sticky’.
Must eat dish: Vegetarian degustation
Cuisine: Contemporary Chef Michael Ryan
Price: $$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Dinner Wed-Sun
Instagram: @theprovenance
Midnight Starling/Ma Cave
60 Piper St, Kyneton
03 5422 3884
Forget Dolly and Kenny, or Keith and Shania, for the best country double act look no further than Kyneton.
For it’s here on Piper Street that chef/owner Steve Rogers is putting on a two-act show that makes the most of his time spent in serious kitchens in Paris (Michel Rostang, Pierre Gagnaire) and closer to home (Jacques Reymond).
Upstairs is the Amelie-charming, bistro-esque Midnight Starling, where it’s duck a l’orange and spatchcock farcie and the best steak frites this side of the Seine.
Downstairs, within the bluestone-walled wine cellar, Ma Cave is a candlelit six-course celebration of French technique that’s fine dining without formal fuss.
A meal here might start with silken duck parfait and boozy Madeira jelly that’s a velvet-gloved punch of power, segue into lamb stuffed with a mushroom and chicken mousse and served with butter-fried sweetbreads, then end with Armagnac-steeped prunes alongside delice au chocolate.
Along with a wine list that looks to Europe and central Victoria in equal measure, some seriously good cocktails served until late and service that’s city smart but country warm, Ma Cave and Midnight Starling is a bona fide hit, as far as duos go.
Must eat dish: Lamb crepinette
Cuisine: French
Chef: Steve Rogers
Price: $$ / $$$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Dinner Wed-Sat, Lunch Sun (Ma Cave Fri.-Sat dinner)
Instagram: @midnightstarling
Kazuki’s
1 Camp St, Daylesford
03 5348 1218
Who would have thought? One of Victoria’s most beguiling Japanese restaurants in the Macedon Ranges. But it’s not so surprising that Kazuki’s should prosper in Victoria’s spa country.
This bountiful region brims with quality produce and chef Kazuki Tsuya, who hails from Akita in Japan’s north, capitalises on it in ingenious ways.
A seasonal Japanese salad (yasai) plucks ingredients from the Daylesford district, lusciously pink local lamb is attended by labne, and ribbons of crisp parsnip arch over quince like bracken.
A silken medley of hapuka, clams and mussels was especially enchanting, as perfectly formed as a haiku.
Kazuki’s compositions are all painterly, the flavours pure and focused, and the gentle staffers who ferry these dishes to you on ceramic plates can unpick their complexities if you wish.
Lit by sculpted lamps, and animated by murals, the dining room here is as well suited to one-course drop ins as diners seeking five course tastings menus with matching wine, sake and tea options. Quite a find.
Must eat dish: Hapuka, tomka, clams, mussels
Cuisine: Japanese
Chef: Kazuki Tsuya
Price: $
Bookings: Yes
Open: Lunch Sat-Sun, Dinner Thurs-Mon
Instagram: @kazukisrestaurant
Ezard at Levantine Hill
882 Maroondah Hwy, Coldstream
03 5962 1333
“Ours is a bloody-minded obsession to achieve perfection.’’
So says Paul Bridgeman, winemaker at Levantine Hill Estate in the Yarra Valley. And anyone lucky enough to sip his 2015 Katherine’s paddock chardonnay or 2014 pinot noir will know he’s at the top of his game.
Chef Teage Ezard manages the Signature Restaurant at this high-hitting winery just beyond Coldstream, and while not yet reaching the heights of Bridgeman’s handcrafted wines, Ezard at Levantine Hill is making its mark in the valley with thoughtful, well executed dishes conveying a real sense of place.
In early Spring, Eildon trout was conjured from under a glass dome swirling with smoke; jamon Iberico, purple congo potatoes and garden herbs (grown on the estate) sprouted from an ovoid ceramic; and dessert, a melange of chocolate, plum, hazelnut and purslane, dazzled on an iceberg white plinth.
Ezard’s theatrical presentation is bound to divide opinion. So is the estate’s stark arching steel and glass restaurant building, which could do with softening landscape work.
We have no reservations about Signature Restaurant service which is fluid, relaxed and informed, and that Ezard will continue to rise to the challenge of matching those critically acclaimed wines.
Must eat dish: Smoked Eildon trout, apple, cucumber
Cuisine: Modern Australian
Chefs: Teage Ezard and Aaron Duffy
Price: $$$
Bookings: Yes
Open: Mon, Wed-Sun noon-5pm, dinner Sat
Instagram: @levantinehill
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