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For all the world-class produce grown and caught in the NSW Northern Rivers, there has never been a great restaurant on Byron Bay’s main drag to show it off. Raes offers a fancy tasting menu up the road at Wategos Beach, and nearby Brunswick Heads and Bangalow are rife with excellent opportunities to twist the head off a local prawn, but the Byron town centre is still all humdrum sushi and “Would you like wheatgrass with that?“

So when a new wine bar coats hibachi-grilled duck breast ($28) with a sauce made from its own rendered fat, mead vinegar and star anise, and serves it under radicchio grown at Boon Luck Farm a few kilometres north, it’s the kind of thing that makes you raise one eyebrow – potentially two. This is some of the most engaging cooking I’ve encountered all year.

That duck is a perfectly balanced two-step of juicy and sweet, largely thanks to segments of orchard-fresh navel orange. It comes after potato crackers topped with manchego custard and feather-soft raw shiitake mushrooms ($9 each) – a high-wire act bolstered by a liberal sprinkle of button mushroom powder. One bite in and I’m asking, “What’s going on?” What is food this interesting doing in a luxury precinct near Byron Bay Woolworths?

Bar Heather opened in November under the direction of former sommeliers James Audas and Tom Sheer, who now spend most of their days importing natural wine. Ollie Wong-Hee leads the tiny kitchen, and the chef was previously on the pans at Sydney restaurants Ester in Chippendale and Stanmore’s three-hatted Sixpenny. Aha! Things are beginning to make more sense.

The joint came about after Audas and Sheer launched Luna Wine Store across the road in 2020 and felt compelled to open a sister venue pouring wine from their own cellars and bottles from the shop. It’s a dark and timber-heavy room which could almost pass as a New York-style steakhouse, but a young floor team keeps things bright and fun. As do oysters with a refreshing cucumber mignonette and top note of makrut lime ($6 each).

What is food this interesting doing in a luxury precinct near Byron Bay Woolworths?

Wong-Hee says he keeps off social media because he doesn’t want to be influenced by what his peers are cooking. This means the bog standards of other wine bars – anchovies on toast, steak tartare, tiramisu – are mostly absent. When tartare does make an appearance, it’s hand-cut venison embellished with roasted peppers on crunchy squares of gnocco fritto ($26). The obligatory raw fish dish stars Tweed Coast tuna with thin curls of nutty celtuce, shiso and saltfermented mandarin ($26). A house of kingfish crudo this is not.

Get ready for this: there’s no sourdough, either. Instead, break a spring onion-laced coil that’s part flaky Chinese pancake and part crispy Jewish flatbread malawach ($8) – essential gear for soaking up an inky XO sauce made from leftover octopus bits ($28). Another roll will be required for the roast chicken gravy underpinning bronzed quail ($40) that’s been brined in vinegar and dry-aged for beautifully concentrated flavour.

Almost every dish is the definition of clever comfort (a $60 rib-eye dripping with seaweedy butter is the only time that proceedings become too rich). I’d stick to the lighter, Asian-inspired options if you intend to have a serious innings – garlicky pork belly and shoulder sausages ($18) wrapped in betel leaves for dunking in charred pineapple sauce; grilled calamari headlining a vivid sorrel and shaved choko salad dressed in curry leaf vinaigrette ($28); and noodles lush with hand-picked spanner crab and a “fragrant” sauce of turmeric, lemongrass and galangal that’s a thumping nod to Thailand ($42).

Natural wine nerds won’t know where to kick off with the drinks list, although a half-serve house martini ($10) is a good idea. We drop $120 on a one-litre bottle of Gut Oggau’s tangy “Maskerade” rosé, made from blaufränkisch and zweigelt grapes in Austria. It gets along with just about anything that isn’t dessert, which on this occasion is a celebration of winter lemons ($14). Specifically, sheep’s yoghurt and lemonade fruit sorbet on a creamy posset set with foraged bush lemons, Meyer lemon segments and lemon curd. Stirring stuff.

Run, don’t walk; fly, don’t drive. Or at least make an advance booking if you’re visiting the Northern Rivers. In a town where tourists tend to gravitate towards bao buns rather than leftover-octopus sauce, Bar Heather has had something of a slow winter. With cooking this smart and delicious, though, I don’t expect that to carry into spring.