Little Picket Lorne review: Kara Monssen tries Jo Barrett’s restaurant at Lorne Bowls Club

Lorne’s new beachside restaurant has world-class eats without pretension — plus pork dimmies, beer and games of lawn bowls.

Little Picket’s dim sims were a menu request from one of the bowls club members. Picture: David Osgood.

Forget what they said on The Simpsons, you can make friends with salad; especially at Little Picket.

I’d even go steady or move in with what’s plucked from the patch here, slicked simply with sweet honey mustard and a twinkle of sea salt.

I’m sure this isn’t exactly what the surfers pined over at the Lorne Bowls Club in years gone by, unless it accidentally ended up on their plates breathing nutrients into their fish and chip or chicken parma dinners.

Yet the tide’s turned in Lorne.

With the Range Rovers, oat lattes and sea of navy-striped cabanas on the main beach are a new wave of hospo folk coming to town.

On one end of the scale there’s billionaire Justin Hemmes who will soon open Sydney’s famed Totti’s at the Lorne Hotel.

Halloumi with honey, lemon and fennel. Picture: David Osgood.

Pork and wallaby mortadella. Picture: David Osgood.

On the other, there’s Jo Barrett: one half of the former Oakridge dream team and eco-queen who lived her most sustainable lockdown life eating bugs, pond-grown fish and veg inside Joost Bakker’s Future Food System experiment at Federation Square.

After a Flinders Island reboot, she’s planted a stake (ahem, a whole white picket fence) in the coastal town with new partner Dave Osgood, by taking over the lease of the bowlo’s restaurant and bar.

If Lorne was fast-becoming the poor man’s Portsea, Little Picket has reclaimed some of its beachy charm.

The timber clubhouse walls celebrate bowls heroes with bronze plaques and leaderboards, the carpets a schmick classroom blue and the kitchen and bar act more like hole-in-the-wall school canteens.

While those floor-to-ceiling glass windows give the 70-odd punters inside the simple dining room a view of the green, where you can hurl a ball down before or after your tucker.

Barrett doesn’t stray too far from her learnings, with all of Little P’s 10 or so dishes made from ingredients farmed, fished or foraged locally. The menu is dictated by what’s fresh and best, rotating every fortnight or so, with new desserts also scrawled on a blackboard in the dining room. The same ethos extends to wine, which is largely affordable, and where everything aside from magnums ($140), is between $50-$98 a bottle and up to $14 by the glass.

The ceviche. Picture: David Osgood.

BBQ quail. Picture: David Osgood.

All other bites are made from scratch, including the halloumi ($18) made from Shultz dairy milk sizzled until sweet and smothered in a lacquer of Otways honey, lemon, and fried capers. Do not share this.

Pork dimmies ($15; a menu request from a club member) look different to the tuck shop finds – slippery, steamed white orbs bouncing with well-seasoned pork and cabbage, finished with a lip-tingling crunchy chilli oil.

Dampen the heat with one of the four brews on tap, tinnies from the fridge or even the elite “I can’t believe its not beer” non-alcoholic Hiatus pacific ale if you’re driving.

Lunch meat mortadella ($18) takes a new turn, with Barrett flexing her Flinders Island contacts to score wallaby from its culling program to turn the gamy meat into confetti-fine slices with a powerful rocket pepper punch.

Summer berry millie fuille. Picture: David Osgood.

The Lorne Bowls Club never looked so good. Picture: David Osgood.

While it looks barbecued to smithereens, the quail ($39) is delightfully plump and tender, rocking a Middle Eastern profile heaped with rice, herbs and hazelnut puree.

Barrett masterfully pushes every ingredient to its absolute, pleasurable limit with poise and control. Small yet mighty, Little Picket is a loveable, exciting and wholesome addition to Lorne’s dining circuit that’s worth the drive from Melbourne – even for the salad.