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Barragunda Dining

One of Australia’s most ambitious farm-to-table experiences.

Emma Breheny
Emma Breheny

Barragunda’s dining room.
1 / 8Barragunda’s dining room.Arianna Leggiero
Dried tomato with smoked stracciatella.
2 / 8Dried tomato with smoked stracciatella.Arianna Leggiero
Young almond and red tropea onion pissaladiere.
3 / 8Young almond and red tropea onion pissaladiere.Arianna Leggiero
Baby radish with sabayon and lovage.
4 / 8Baby radish with sabayon and lovage.Arianna Leggiero
Mussels a la grecque.
5 / 8Mussels a la grecque.Arianna Leggiero
Views of the native vegetation and the kitchen garden.
6 / 8Views of the native vegetation and the kitchen garden.Arianna Leggiero
Black Angus with new-season alliums.
7 / 8Black Angus with new-season alliums.Arianna Leggiero
The lush vegetable garden.
8 / 8The lush vegetable garden.Kristoffer Paulsen

Contemporary$$

Barragunda’s 400 hectares provide Simone Watts (ex-Coda, MoMo) and her team with lamb, olives, nashi pears, rye grain, lemongrass, Angus beef, garlic, honey, grapefruit – the list goes on. When guests arrive, they walk past a wall of brightly coloured preserves: green almonds, baby radishes, slender fennel.

Mussels from Flinders supplier Harry’s are served in a spiced white wine reduction, with fried mussels and sunflower miso.

Small merguez sausages made with the estate’s lamb (reared for longer than usual to get more flavour and yield) are paired with ezme, the Turkish salsa featuring diced tomatoes, cucumber and peppers. The sausage is smoked over a large wood-fired hearth that was shipped in from the much-celebrated Adelaide Hills restaurant The Summertown Aristologist.

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The 40-seat dining room, with its pitched roof of spotted gum, feels a little like a barn. Terracotta tiles, earthenware plates, and arrangements of grasses and flowers grown on the property give a strong sense of the natural world.

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Emma BrehenyEmma BrehenyEmma is Good Food’s Melbourne eating out and restaurant editor.

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Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/goodfood/melbourne-eating-out/barragunda-dining-20250310-p5lih1.html