Oaks Kitchen & Bar delivers a taste of the tropics
A cooking school north of Cairns has morphed into a dining experience guests are unlikely to forget.
On the surface, gardener and chef Rachael Boon appears to take a relaxed and somewhat haphazard approach to her thriving organic patch in tropical north Queensland.
“Nothing is in a straight line,” she says. “It’s very random … I just chuck in some seeds, throw it around and let it go.”
And “go” it does. Plump native potatoes hang from vines next to papaya trees, bright green oblongs clustered beneath their leaves.
The green-thumbed Boon shows us apple eggplants, lemongrass, wild ginger, saw-toothed coriander and a host of other fragrant herbs. Elsewhere on the plot are jackfruit, longan, banana and lychee trees, pumpkin, cucumber and tomatoes, assiduously mulched and surrounded by companion plants to keep pests at bay.
Best of all for visitors to Oaks Kitchen and Garden, between Cairns and Port Douglas, they get to sample the fruits of Boon’s labour and the impressive culinary skills of her husband, Ben Wallace.
The pair began offering Southeast Asian cooking classes in 2017 at the 1.6ha property, which belongs to Boon’s father, a Thai restaurateur who previously owned eateries in Port Douglas and now lives in Chiang Mai.
Guests soon became so enamoured of Wallace’s cooking they asked if they could skip class and go straight to the eating. Suddenly, they had a restaurant on their hands too.
It’s a quirky venue; a converted shed open to the elements on two sides and strung with fairy lights.
Boon, who is also an artist, has left her broad, cheery brushstrokes on some of the walls, and there’s a hodgepotch of vintage furniture stacked with crockery, glassware and homemade pickles. Diners perch at an assortment of timber tables, topped with vases of flowers and greenery from the garden while a wood-fired grill is ablaze in one corner.
This may be no fine diner, but whatever it lacks in decor, it more than makes up for with such delicious cuisine I am raving about it for days afterwards.
Wallace’s CV includes stints at hatted Melbourne eatery Easy Tiger, six years in Europe and three years as sous chef at the acclaimed Longrain in the Victorian capital. He is ably assisted by Keelan Gallogly, formerly of Baillie Lodges and with 10 years at Rockpool under his belt. Together, they take us on an eight-course tour of Southeast Asia that begins with betel leaves laden with crabmeat, peanuts, ginger and lime, and concludes with a light-as-a-feather butterfly pea tea custard with taro and palm caramel.
Along the way we try coral trout carpaccio with green ants, a sour orange curry of Spanish mackerel and snake beans, plus smoky grilled eggplant with kangkong or water spinach. Our tastebuds are zinging with the triumvirate of sweet, sour and spicy flavours, and a bottle of Jim Barry riesling brought with us proves an excellent accompaniment on this warm autumn afternoon.
Wherever possible, Boon and Wallace source their ingredients locally, including pasture-raised Sommerlad chickens that are protected by Maremma guard dogs on a cane farm overlooking Hinchinbrook Island. If the couple can’t grow it themselves, they like to support producers nearby and up on the Atherton Tablelands, a veritable food bowl where everything from coffee to avocados and macadamia nuts is produced.
“If it grows up here, we’ll use it,” Boon says.
“We’re surrounded by amazing produce,” adds Wallace.
Indeed, it feels like we have stumbled upon some kind of tropical Eden; a bountiful place where almost anything grows. Boon and Wallace met when they were working at Sydney’s Manly Pavilion, one at front of house, the other in the kitchen.
Together they have forged a path that plays to both their strengths.
Penny Hunter was a guest of Tourism Tropical North Queensland.