Garden restaurants: dine among trees and blooms
These garden restaurants serve up delicious flavours in a plant-lover’s paradise.
BOTANIC HOUSE, ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN, SYDNEY
Luke Nguyen, one of Australia’s best-loved chefs, is in charge of the menus at Botanic House, a conservatory-like restaurant set amid ponds and lush vegetation in the heart of Sydney’s harbourside public gardens. Nguyen’s fare celebrates his Asian heritage, especially in a lunchtime tasting menu of eight courses brimming with herbs, spices and leafy goodness. The feast winds up with a divine lychee pudding but the option of adding the likes of a basket of crab and scallop dumplings along the way is irresistible. This glassy, airy restaurant must be one of the city’s best-kept dining secrets and instead of dim sum trolley clatter, there’s birdsong and blossoms. The exotic experience is extended along meandering pathways, passing pink bananas and sacred lotuses, petals furled as if clasped in prayer.
Stay Pullman Quay Grand; all.accor.com
SUSAN KUROSAWA
FRASER’S RESTAURANT, KINGS PARK, PERTH
With vistas to Perth’s skyline, photographs taken at Fraser’s Restaurant have filled wedding albums since its opening in 1993. Window views are impressive, but the premium seats are outside, amid the aroma of lemon-scented gums and birdsong within Kings Park and Botanic Garden. Executive chef Chris Taylor produces a locally sourced menu and there’s a calendar of special-occasion dinners, including in WA truffle season. The restaurant is named after Malcolm Fraser – not the former PM, but the second Surveyor-General of Perth who, with Governor Frederick Weld, formally gazetted the land as a public park in 1872. Visit during the annual Kings Park Festival in September and take a guided stroll amid the flora, including wildflowers in bloom.
Stay Como The Treasury; comohotels.com
ANDREA BLACK
GINGER AT THE ARBORETUM, CANBERRA
The panorama from Ginger’s hillside perch takes in all of the national capital. In the foreground is the National Arboretum’s nearly 100 forests of rare, endangered and ceremonial trees. The 250ha site has been planted in the past 15 years, having been razed by bushfires in 2001 and 2003. The menu, too, is a vision of Canberra’s best. Janet Jeffs helms the kitchen and sources produce and wines from a 160km “food shed” around the city. Think organic, heirloom, seasonal and full of flavour. From her winter menu I select chargrilled beef, served with cream mash, coffee-roasted beetroot, pink lady apples and pepper berry jus. A dessert of pressed baked apple with macadamia cinnamon crumble is a sensation.
Stay Ovolo Nishi; ovolohotels.com
GRAHAM ERBACHER
RESTAURANT BOTANIC, ADELAIDE BOTANIC GARDENS
In Adelaide’s green heart, US-born chef Justin James and his team are on the hunt for curious ingredients for their garden-to-plate degustation menus. With an alchemic sleight of spoon, bunya bunya needles flavour sorbet; coral mushroom, like some just-landed deep sea creature, is served with a fermented vegetable paste; wasabi leaves wrap Murray cod belly. Relaunched in the garden’s historic tearooms, Restaurant Botanic is a sophisticated Miss Marple meets Heston Blumenthal-style gastronomic temple. There are leafy views through floor-to-ceiling windows, an open kitchen with wood fire and a curved chef’s table around the action. A fermentation room is on the way to preserve seasonal ingredients. Every dish resembles a little garden and there’s a “temperance menu” of mocktails and teas to complement the excellent wine list.
Stay Mayfair Hotel; mayfairhotel.com.au
CHRISTINE McCABE
