Tasmania’s Huon Valley is set to become a culinary hotspot when renowned chef Analiese Gregory opens a tiny restaurant on her farm property a 30-minute drive south-west of Hobart.

Gregory, who lists high-profile restaurants such as London’s The Ledbury and Spain’s Mugaritz on her resume, as well as Sydney’s three-hatted Quay and Hobart’s two-hatted Franklin, is in the process of converting one of her sheds into an intimate eatery where she’ll serve a menu of hyper-local food to 10 people at a time.

“One of [the sheds] was an abandoned veterinary clinic with lots of fluoro lights and stainless steel tables,” she says. “I had left [the space] like that for ages and the goats used to live in there because the door was broken ... I always thought I should really do something with the space, but I was uncertain what for a long time.”

The New Zealand-born chef – who has put Tasmania’s rich ocean-to-plate lifestyle on the global culinary map by appearing alongside chef Gordon Ramsay in his National Geographic series Uncharted and on her TV series, A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking – considered turning it into an office or using it as a recipe test kitchen.

But instead, Gregory decided to open it up to the public and return to cooking (she’s been out of the game for about five years). And while she’s still figuring out details like where guests will park their cars and getting the property on water mains, there’s one thing she’s certain about.

“For me, it’s going to be an anti restaurant. It’ll be the antithesis to the restaurants I’ve worked before. I’m trying for it to be very low-key, very low-stress.”

For starters, it’ll be a two-person operation: Gregory and a front-of-house pro, Nikki Friedli. Friedli moved to the Apple Isle to work – MONA and now at Hobart’s Templo restaurant – but before was at Adelaide’s Africola, where she was awarded the Good Food Guide’s Service Excellence Award in 2017.

Gregory and Friedli will offer only two or three services a week and a set menu at the still-unnamed restaurant. “It’ll be just lunches because I know in a countryside setting like this – I do think lunch is the better meal,” says Gregory.

She’ll be using pigs reared down the road, octopus and abalone plucked from the nearby sea, and ingredients you seldom find in a bigger eatery because of costs and supply. Gregory will use an Esse wood-burning stove with six ovens, which is already in the shed, and the pair have also started planting vegetable seedlings in preparation.

“The thing with Tasmania is no one will deliver stuff here, or very few people would, so a lot of the time we’ll be driving around to farms and fishermen to pick things up,” says Gregory.

As well as a menu showing off Tasmania’s outstanding ingredients, the space will be filled with locally created things. The 10-seat table was made by a local artisan from 100-year-old Oregon pine reclaimed from a sunken ship. “As much as I can, everything will be made by hand,” she says.

When Good Food calls, both Gregory and Friedli are sanding timber. They work on the restaurant between their day jobs and although there’s not a set opening date, they’re thinking halfway through 2024.

“There are no [financial] backers,” says Gregory. “It’s just me, which is also partially why it’s taken so long. But that means I’m not beholden to anything. There are no timelines. I’ve reached the stage where it’s a lifestyle business.”