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The other week, I packed an overnight bag and set off for the Blue Mountains. Not to bushwalk or drink tea in Leura, but to write about a hot new restaurant in the Megalong Valley which organically grows most of its produce onsite. Cattle and lamb are raised on the surrounding farmland, too, and much of the modern tasting menu is smartly presented and precisely cooked.

The fine diner’s ragged mountain views are stunning, the room luxuriously appointed and the staff efficient and friendly. However, the cheapest bottle of wine is $80 and you’re looking at $185 per person for snacks and four courses. The cost may be justified – farming ain’t easy – but as a pleasant rather than outstanding experience, the place is hard to recommend to anyone who doesn’t order triple-digit barolo like the rest of us ask for still or sparkling.

So I’m going to tell you about Tempus instead. The bistro-style restaurant opened in late 2021 in the centre of Katoomba and it offers just about everything you could want after a day scaling Govetts Leap or, in my case, eating raw baby vegetables on ice.

There’s a terrific steak to share, roast spuds with the requisite crunch and fluffy interiors ($14) and a no-funny-business apple crumble ($16). Wine starts at $12 a glass. All that’s missing is a fireplace.

The lighting is a little washed-out on the night my wife and I visit, but there’s enough stained timber and linen napkins to keep things cosy. No doubt the space looks best at lunch, when street-facing windows let in natural light to warm, peach-coloured walls and hanging tapestries.

Locals also flock here for a breakfast menu featuring eggs and granola, among other things, plus a rather delicious-looking hash brown with house-cured trout and horseradish ($20).

Chatty co-owners Baden Evans, Jason Lee Cole and Louise Delaunay-Evans keep the dinner carte mostly simple, but with a few cheffy flourishes. A thick domino of halloumi ($6), for instance, is piped with “burnt apple” puree and fennel jam, creating a taste not unlike hoisin sauce. Baby gem lettuce ($16) is sliced lengthways, chargrilled and topped with a rubble of bronzed macadamia nuts and kombu powder for savoury heft.

Kingfish tartare ($22) is the highlight of the entrees, with firm bits of pinky-white flesh punched up by a capsicum tapenade. A paper-thin rice cracker on the side is perfectly weighted to carry the fish without overpowering its natural, savoury-sweet flavour.

Port Stephens oysters ($6) are the only disappointment, having a blunt texture as if they had been opened earlier in the day rather than shucked to order.

Lee Cole leads the kitchen. The Welsh-born chef has also cooked at Peter Doyle’s two-hatted Est. in Sydney, which means he knows his way around a bit of fish – a pan-fried snapper fillet ($40) could be sliced with a spoon if the skin weren’t so crisp. It comes with hot and blistered baby tomatoes and a smack of confit garlic; if we were drinking white, that $12 glass of Lucky Cat 2021 Pinot Gris from Victoria’s King Valley would be looking pretty good.

But cold Katoomba nights call for an earthy, juicy red, such as Bellwether’s 2021 Ant Series Cabernet ($80), made with minimal intervention in Coonawarra. It’s also exactly what you want to drink with a chimichurri-covered, 400-gram sirloin ($65) that’s soft and buttery and tastes like a cow that’s lived a happy life.

If there was another couple at our table, duck breast with pomegranate-braised cabbage ($45) would have been on the docket. Next time.

There are other nice things happening in these parts.Black Cockatoo Bakery, which supplies excellent sourdough to Tempus, is just down the street. It has serious coffee and a potato-and-gruyere Danish I’ve thought about daily for weeks. In Blackheath, Ates restaurant roasts Mediterranean share plates in an ironbark-fired oven, and local winery Frankly This Wine Was Made by Bob is set to open a bar nearby. Also in Blackheath, the recently refurbished New Ivanhoe Hotel has a working fireplace and sticky date pudding. You know what to do; brandy optional.

Back at Tempus, we finish with a rich slice of Basque cheesecake ($16) and fix up the bill, which is half the cost of our lunch for double the satisfaction. On the walk back to the hotel, I spy a newish Korean cafe and a Tibetan eatery specialising in momo dumplings. It had been two years between visits to the Blue Mountains. The next gap won’t be so long.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine