Monday night’s launch of The Age Good Food Guide 2025 marks the 29th time Stefano’s in Mildura has made the cut, a formidable record for one of the state’s farthest-flung restaurants.

In its first appearance in the Guide, the 1995-96 edition, the now-32-year-old restaurant was described as “our out-of-town discovery of the year”.

“Stefano’s is hard to beat for hospitality, charm, quality and value,” the reviewer concluded three decades ago.

But two-hatted Stefano’s nearly didn’t make it this year. There have been whispers that Stefano de Pieri would be closing the restaurant, almost 475 kilometres from Melbourne.

The groundbreaking regional chef and restaurateur planned to retire, and the candlelit cellar dining room in the regional hub’s Grand Hotel would no longer serve his lard-laced focaccia, soup with yabby meat, pasta with veal ragu or simple, perfect cod from the Murray River over the road.

De Pieri didn’t shut down the rumours. He told regulars he was in discussions with a potential buyer. Wine nuts noticed that he was running down his exceptional cellar of Italian wines such as Piedirosso and Barolo.

Good Food spoke to him in May, mid-machinations. “My desire is to move on. I’m turning 70. I have 10 good years left,” he said at the time. “But I don’t want to give it away. To negotiate, you need to have the patience of Julian Assange.”

The following month, whistleblower Assange was released from jail but De Pieri remained in his subterranean kitchen, sizzling sage to pour over pumpkin ravioli, contemplatively layering Brussels sprouts and guanciale in an enormous pan.

Finally, as an early Christmas present to restaurant fans far and wide, Stefano de Pieri has announced he has kiboshed the sale and rededicated himself to the restaurant that has been key to his identity since it opened in 1992.

“I couldn’t be happier that the deal fell through,” he says. “I thought I was done with all this but the moment I decided that we couldn’t come to terms and I needed to pull the pin, I felt absolute relief and excitement.”

“We are all glad, to be honest,” says restaurant manager Anthony Langdon, whose mother, Rosalie, worked with Stefano for the opening. “I’ve known Stefano my entire life. The restaurant is a complete expression of his personality.”

Langdon has worked in other top restaurants, including Jacques Reymond’s eponymous restaurant, which closed in 2013, and three-hatted Vue de Monde. He returned to Stefano’s in May.

“I was glad to help when I thought it was a transition but I’m even more happy that it’s fallen through,” he says. “That all feels like a diversion now and he’s 100 per cent committed. It’s wonderful to see the passion he’s putting into the food.”

Wine writer Alder Yarrow was entranced by a lamb and bread broth he ate in the restaurant last week. The ugly-delicious sopa coada is a specialty of De Pieri’s birthplace near Treviso, where it’s usually made with squab. De Pieri uses lamb broth, lightened and brightened with quail stock, and layered with ciabatta and pecorino.

“To describe it as bread in broth with a little cheese is like describing the Sistine Chapel as a ceiling with some paint daubed onto it,” Yarrow wrote on Instagram. “It was mind-blowingly delicious … Layered, nuanced, and riveting. I bow down.”

“I thought I was going to retire but now I have two businesses to run.”

Chef-restaurateur Stefano de Pieri

While de Pieri has been contemplating retirement, he has also been renovating a mid-century house, which will become a little cooking school and event space.

“I want to do cooking classes for locals,” he says. “They will come to learn one dish, something simple – a stock, a roast chicken, a one-pot pasta – and they’ll go home and cook it that night.”

Somehow, he’s ended up with a restaurant as well as a cooking school. “I thought I was going to retire but now I have two businesses to run,” he says. “I was thinking about the coming decade all wrong: instead of wondering how to fill my time, I’m going to make the most of every minute.”

10 restaurants with 20-plus years in the Good Food Guide

• Abla’s, Carlton
• Cafe di Stasio, St Kilda
• Cecconi’s, Melbourne CBD
• Donovan’s, St Kilda
• Flower Drum, Melbourne CBD
• France-Soir, South Yarra
• Grossi Florentino, Melbourne CBD
• Lake House, Daylesford
• MoVida, Melbourne CBD
• Stefano’s, Mildura

Follow live updates of The Age Good Food Guide Award from 6pm on Monday, November 18, via our blog on theage.com.au and on Instagram and Facebook @goodfoodau.