New restaurant mission statement

"All our food is sourced with the most possible fossil fuel used in its production, transport and execution. All of our fruit and vegetables have been sprayed with insecticides, herbicides and are picked by underpaid workers. All of our meat has been force-fed with growth hormones, is maltreated and irradiated. Our eggs and hens are battery. Our Pigs are intensely farmed and our beef is from feed lots, provenance unknown.


Our dishes are scientifically designed to contain large amounts of fat, sugar and salt and we tweak them as to enhance their addictive properties. We regularly market our food to the financially vulnerable, the young and impressionable and the obese.

Our restaurant staff are overworked, underpaid and we ensure they have little job security.

But above all, we employ all these strategies to bring you, our loyal customers, the cheapest food possible, wherever in the world this may come from"

Why are there so few tubby Italians?

With a few exceptions, Italians seem to be a race of thin people which is completely surprising considering whats on offer to eat.

Do the Italians get bored eating the same thing?

Luigi contemplated yet another Pizza Napoli

Do the French, the Spanish, the Greeks or the Bulgarians tire of the food that their seasons, culture and geography dictate?


This was a question I pondered whilst perusing a menu in Milan after recognising what appeared to me, as the usual suspects I had become accustomed to seeing after my brief sojourn in that country. Now I realise that I might be a particularly fidgety and restless consumer of hot dinners and other people might be more at ease with meal repetition but if I was getting fatigued after just two weeks, how must the Italian feel?

Well, it appears just fine, grazie. All of the natives I spoke to were very happy with the food they ate even though they could understand how I thought it repetitive.

Perhaps we in Australia are so promiscuous with our food choices, cherry-picking the choice bits from everyone else’s culture that we feel trapped by the limitations that a specific cuisine would present.

Conversely, maybe the reason why so many other cuisines are so visible throughout the world is that their cultural borders are guarded as fiercely as one would defend their national identity and sovereignty? Australia on the other hand, has no tangible national cuisine to speak of but we do get to ‘mop up the gravy’ from everybody else’s plate.

A friend of mine returned from living in rural France and was relieved to be able to purchase some spices that she was unable to do over there. ‘Not even some garam masala’ she quipped. Now taken out of context, this might seem like a middle-class affectation of the first world order and it’s also reasonable to think, ‘When in Rome or in this case Auvergne’ you’re over there why not just eat as they do? Fair enough too, I mean the other end of the spectrum is doing a Warney (remember Shane Warne shipping cans of baked beans to India coz he didn’t like the grub?! Classy)

Personally, I’d enjoy immersing myself in the foodie culture of a particular region within a country however I’d still get pangs to enjoy some noodles, a Thai salad, a fragrant curry, a pie or anything that would break up the eventual monotony of only one diet.

Go Behind the RVL Scenery

Check out our ad that Tourism Tas pinched off us!

No fat chefs on the tellie!

me before my weight gain

Working in the kitchen it’s quite uncommon in my experience to ever sit down and eat your lunch or dinner or any kind of snack. In fact it rarely happens. Food tends to be eaten on the run, standing up, between tasks or whilst doing them. After years of eating on the job I have acquired a habit of gulping my food which I know I share with many other kitchen professionals.

What doesn’t help is that staffs aren’t able to make the connection when my mouth appears to be chewing food, is probably not the most appropriate time to ask me a question. This usually causes me to swallow hurriedly, not giving me the chance to gain any pleasure from the morsel momentarily in my mouth and eventually cause a painful reflux. This reality is diametrically opposite to the reaction I hope the food I am serving is having on the customer. So, as well as missing out on a social life by being a chef, I can’t even enjoy the food I’m around all day! So I tend to guts it down before I get interrupted.

I can usually tell the people who are chefs, cooks or waiters at barbeques, functions or dinner parties before I am introduced by the way I observe them scoffing their food down.

Not all chefs are overweight, in fact I’m surprised that there are so many skinny-chefs-pants wearing cooks around? Actually they don’t wear chefs’ pants these days, more like black trousers, either way they appear to be on the svelte side.

Maybe it’s an age thing? There are plenty of older chefs who look like they’ve been in a ‘good-paddock’ me included. It’s a challenge not to put on weight when you’re usually so pre-occupied with the planning, choosing and cooking of food all day as the temptation to not just check the taste of things but to consume them is great. I know Michelle Bridges might roll her eyes skyward at my ‘excuse’ but it is a professional trap that I personally fall victim to with alarming regularity.

Over the years I have tried to commit to eating only in the traditional meal times and this lasts for a while but then I hit the slippery slope.

For instance my morning and lunch intake might read like this:

• a toasted sandwich.
• a hunk of bread and butter.
• a handful of chips.
• some salad, mooshed around the mixing bowl to soak up the remnants of dressing.
• some crispy end bits of caramelized meat left in the roasting tray.
• a few of olives.
• some roasted nuts cooling on a tray.
• the extra sausage from a mistaken breakfast order
• a finger of  cream on the Banoffee or jam from the doughnuts
• at least 6 to 8 lattes

This is after breakfast at home. I also have lunch at work. On the plus side I drink heaps of water, though it’s usually carbonated, my bad.

Can you see the problem here? I love eating and it shows. 

In the media these days you'd be hard pressed to find a chef or cooking person on the plus side of the ledger. This is curious. It's as if the fat chef has been made invisible. Do the powers that be on TV want to send the message that its not OK to be a fat chef? You can cook the stuff as long as you don't eat it?

In my opinion this adds yet another layer to our disconnection to food. Its as if food had become a medium in which to express ones creativity and individuality without gathering any calories along the way.

Even the voluptuous Nigella felt the pressure to 'slim-down'. Surely this is at odds which the kind of food she seems to enjoy? Again, cook the sticky date pudd but don't eat it fatty!

Conversely the amount of people who write about food professionally including many bloggers, are on the weighty side. All this whilst our chefs and cooks shrink right before our eyes.

Lo-Fi, a new dawn

Why we’re going Lo-Fi,

When you’ve been cooking food professionally as long as I have you get to see a lot of trends come and go. What never changes though is the currency of value and taste. Sounds simple enough I suppose but its quite an elusive thread and when you apply it to the offerings of the plethora of eateries around, its surprising how little it occurs.

Sure many places are pushing the envelope, competing with the discretionary dollar reserved for the theatre, the arts or a concert. However most places are just trying to channel what they perceive to be, what the public wants.

In Australia we have incrementally built up our reserves of a sophisticated appreciation of food through the decades, primarily from the influence of migrants and our insatiable appetite for travel for which we are known globally.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed a swell of food information steadily rise with the aspirations of an upwardly mobile and cuisine savvy public. I say upwardly mobile not in the sense of being a ‘yuppie’, but in the way that there has been an incredibly steep rise in food knowledge generally through TV shows, the rise of the minor celebrity chef, mag articles and the pontificating of the high priests and priestesses of food. In fact I think this ‘alertness’ has ‘sped up’ dramatically in recent times.

Like many things in a 24/7 world of instant gratification, the nuances of idiosyncratic food culture are gradually being squeezed out the world over and stifled in the corporate led march, toward convenience and ultimately, system-over-product. If they’re not, then they’re being acquisitioned and re-branded for the same purpose. Either way the hip choices we think we’re making are simply the remains of what happens to be the ‘pink-slime’ of homogeny.

Like all oppressive regimes, they inevitably spawn recalcitrant movements that wont ‘go quietly into the night’. Whilst not all of these factions are united by doctrine they all share a language of a disassociation with the status quo and amongst their number I count myself.

For some time I’ve grappled with trying to construct a singular voice within the white-noise of professional competition and moving to Tassie was part of this process. Having observed the light and shade of making ones living in the town that one also lives, the fact that we are in a fiscally depressed state and that Tasmania demands a unique way of approaching life I have now decided that its time to shift into a new gear.

I’ve always liked the idea of putting out simply roasted meats, gilded by flame and embossed by a stretch in the wood oven. It’s taken me several years to get to this juncture, one in which I once spied on the horizon of my ambition but was quick to dismiss it as too prosaic but after years of observing maps, reading the runes and toiling with sextants, a true path has made itself clear.

So we’re going Lo-Fi.

What does this mean exactly? Is this yet another affectation employed by a business owner hoping to cash-in on the zeitgeist for authentication and provenance? Although I have tendency toward the cynical, no, I don’t see it as such.

In fact, it’s about paring it back to as fundamental as we can with the food and don’t think this irony or word is lost on me!

I’m in the ‘eating’ camp not the ‘dining’ camp and so,

rawfood + fire = yum

Taste of the Huon 2013 + Red Velvet Lounges winning food stall!

the stall, seeking to replicate the bonhomie of the cafe on a ah..er.. football ground?!

photograph Luke Bowden

the ever photogenic Jenna + some fat git

what we served:

little jars of chicken liver pate, mulled wine jelly, cornichons + fresh bread roll $8

free-range pork san choi bau on wasabi leaves $5

slightly bigger jars of vanilla yoghurt, raspberry + blackberry jelly trifle $7

we're stoked as its our first time with our own stall and last year we were runners-up on a shared stall.

Thoughts on a menu

Restaurants are funny things. When menus are written there’s a dynamic tension between the restaurant and the customer. People patronize establishments for a variety of reasons, which I wont go into too much detail here but I will say the language of the menu is a sure fire way to determine what kind of customer businesses hope to attract. An important distinction to make is the choice between ‘eating out’ and  ‘dining out’.

Surely it takes some insider knowledge to understand the complexities of a dish that reads: Butter, dandelion, fish crumb, grape. How can the average person really hope to grapple with a menu description like this? The question volleyed back to me might sound like this: ‘why must the dish be understandable to everyone else? Fair enough, it doesn’t but it just seems like a method to exclude people who aren’t in the know.

Some time ago in Australia we thankfully moved away from using French as the language of menus. Whilst elements of this language made sense, much of it was French food, it really became to represent a kind of class difference. For some time after that we sailed along with a exuberant egalitarian approach to menu writing but now a new ‘clubbiness’ has evolved that forsakes the usual weapon of choice in the armory of elitists, Jargon and replaces it with a dictatorial list of ingredients without any reference to how it is prepared.

A similar thing is happening in wine.

Just when I thought the Berlin Wall of wine snobbery came crumbling down it has now being re-built brick by brick by wine zealots of the natural kind.

A while ago I came to the conclusion that the more people know about food, the less they want it mucked around with. Conversely for those who don’t, there are a variety of eateries that cater specifically for them and I’ll go further and suggest that the numerous cooking reality TV shows are targeted at this demographic. Sure, plenty of people watch these shows, including myself at times and I like to think I know a bit about cooking but this is more about car-crash tellie than being informed. Don’t get me wrong I’m not being snobbish here, there are some great businesses that do very well thank you very much but its unlikely that you’ll see them accepting awards for excellence as deemed by the foodie arbiters in the high office of taste. This has always perplexed me.

Firstly, isn’t the sign of a reputable establishment the fact that it is well patronized? If I had a dollar for every lauded place that sits idle whilst the populist joint is heaving next door, I’d be a rich fat bloke.

Secondly, there is an assumption from the food judiciaries that populism sits at odds with the high-art of the kitchen. So by this measure a busy place cannot be serving ‘important food’.

This brings me to the anticipation of the diner.

How many times have you heard ‘I could’ve cooked this at home’ or ‘I want something that I couldn’t cook at home’?

What a conundrum.

How does one negotiate such a spectrum of expectation? Think of it this way. On a table of two you could have someone who wants comfort food and the other who wants theatre on a plate? One of them will leave disappointed.

Complicating this is the notion of irony. Lets say a particular place delves into the retro cookbooks and serves Thermidor, Dianne and Rockefeller. Throw into the mix that the team behind said venture have some form in high-end establishments with media exposure and hey presto, the diners who ‘get-it’ can marvel at how ironic they are being by re-interpreting cheesy dishes of yesteryear. Problems arise though when less ‘sophisticated’ folks arrive and marvel at the prices for a jam rolly poly, which ‘they could have cooked at home mind you!’

Equally if a no-name operator plied their trade for years doing exactly the same food I would suggest they’d go largely ignored by the Fooderati despite a legion of supportive and regular custom.

Just a few things to ponder over your, eggs, bacon, toast, sauce.

Oh well, back to menu writing.

Primary (Producer) nursery rhyme

Our fruit rots on the ground,

and imported cans lie on the shelf,

Because it’s cheaper to get it from abroad

than to harvest it ourself.

What I don’t get is our pollies

whom hark back to yesteryear,

When our standard of living was the cornerstone,

of everything we hold so dear.

But in their quest to save a dollar

And make the playing field even,

Have they squeezed our stoic producers,

into a final season?

Opening a restaurant will cost you Zillions!

How much money should a restaurateur spend on a new project?

I’m gonna make a big call here but the huge cash splash outlay that many operators fork out when setting up a new restaurant or café is akin to what the Hollywood blockbuster is to high art. It’s a tactic designed to your loosen your stubborn money with the lubricants of shock and awe. It detonates the notion of neophillia that may lie inert within us and then condenses it into a compulsive urge to visit. But like chewing gum, it loses it flavor pretty quickly and then all you’re left with is some window putty in your gob. Once the hubris has died down, the rent-a-crowd moved on and the reviewers fluttered in to anoint or dismiss its up to the product and service to do the rest of the act. Sadly for many blockbusters, this isn’t enough.

Of course there are exceptions.

When high talent and high art come together the results set the benchmark but in my opinion, this is a pretty rare occurrence.

If spending so much moolah is a pre-requisite for a successful restaurant or café business, how does one explain the queues snaking from the, op-shop-chic, Formica-tabled and cobbled together fit outs?

I don’t think one has to spend a shedload. In fact I think the places that attract my custom are the ones where the operators personality is out and proud and on display for all to see. They might be quirky. They might be sophisticated and they may even be sexy. They all share a common denominator though: They are not your ‘Off the rack’ designs churned out by Interior Decorating Central.

People often comment on the blandness of Hotel lobbies and their restaurants. Commonly, a pervading undercurrent of corporate-ness denudes any hint of that elusive element we call charm. They’re often staffed by well meaning and courteous panto-players for whom devotion to the role only goes as far as the end of the shift is in start contrast to the owner-operator whom toils daily with ‘the method’ and hopefully never sees the final curtain fall.

I’m coming to the belief that many operators are relying on the big fit-out because there’s only so far you can go with the food and bev. There are operators that ‘gather’ talent, place them on a big stage, sit back and wait for the hordes to arrive but are routinely disappointed that this is not enough to attract custom. Regularly we read about ‘hospitality-supergroups’ that merge only to divide like cells a short time later. I believe that this is because the venture may, on paper, stack up however many are blind to the emerging methods in which younger eaters and drinkers are using venues.

Meanwhile, a generation of nuovo operatore are finding spaces in the cracks left by the Boomer and X operators, in which to trade, often on a shoestring budget with only self belief and enthusiasm behind them. For every big-ticket opening there are several smaller places emerging not just in the cities but also even in rural areas.

The big restaurant groups I have been involved with never said this out loud but we all knew we were targeting the baby Boomers. The shop fit-outs were appealing to them, so were the menus, the style of service and the ambience.

Makes sense really, they have most of the money.

However, we might be just on the cusp of a shift in for whom, the legion of eateries are targeting?

That creeping food puritanism

What’s wrong with opening a jar?

My daughter told me that a couple of contestants on the reality cooking show were canned because they used a pre-prepared curry paste? Hope I’ve got the facts right.

If they did, so what?! Most people use convenience foods, not just here but all over the world.

Have we now reached the stage where it’s become a crime against humanity to reach for a jar of Pataks, Leggo’s or Mae Ploy? Crikey, these products were designed to make life a bit more convenient.

I make my living cooking so I have a rusted-on mistrust of any pre-prepared food product but that doesn’t mean I judge anyone else who does use them.

Because I make my own spice mixes, pastes and sauces professionally I’m fortunate to have access to them in the home environment. Many home cooks have the skill to make their own but just as many don’t and many others don’t have the time and some just can’t be fagged.

“Hmm I feel like curry tonight, oh wait a minute, it says here that I need fresh galangal and coconut! Oh well its snags and mash again!”

The people who can’t be fagged cooking or have zero interest in it have found lately that it’s become akin to having leprosy in many circles. In fact, not having an interest in koo-zeen, wipes out much of the morning workplace chatter and social intercourse that make up much of our idle or awkward ice-breaking banter. Where can you go when someone asks you about the latest ep of Masterchef or when to add the ‘drizzle of oil’ when ‘plating –up’? Nowhere, that’s where.

Don’t bother trying to fake it either. That’ll illicit a worse response.

Saying you like ‘raspberry jelly’ hopefully when a foodie is babbling about spherification gel techniques is more likely to damage your reputation than if you were just to say ‘I have no idea what you’re on about’

It’d kinda be like trying to chat chummily to a BMW 7 series driver when you’ve got the level entry cheapo 1 series beemer-you’re just not on the same planet.

Another aspect that I find amusing is this silly notion that everyone’s dinner must be made from scratch or it isn’t any good. In fact you are harming your family by not doing so and being unethical in the process.

Yes some convenience products are of dubious quality and provenance but not all of them are. For instance, if I were to by some locally made chutney, jam or spice paste at the local fair or market, that’s the same as using a convenience product isn’t it?

That’s just ridiculous.

If you use the same logic, we wouldn’t get around in cars because it’s ‘too convenient’ and ‘we’re taking the short cut’. Also what about this question that keeps bobbing up in Vox Pops: 'Whats you most embarrassing pantry item?' Food which is embarrassing? Give me a break, it's food not not flatulence! Also the term 'Junk Food' irritates me, its not 'Junk' as such, it's food that has been deemed below-parr, low rent and declasse.
The only time it is permitted to be consumed by the uber-foodie- is when they are deliberately slumming it, on a road trip or hungover-sometimes all three but never as a serious choice unless they are non compus mentis.

Finally, many disciples of the DIY cult preach with a piety that borders on fanaticism which is really quite out of touch with the reality of modern living. Don’t know about you but I don’t always want to wait for my butter to churn, my hen to lay an egg or my dough to leaven-sometimes I just want to eat.

Design your own menu!

Menu by consensus or 'Crowdsourcing' (cheers @theprovenance)Ever read a menu and thought, ‘Gee I wish they had this or that’ as you scan the list? Or have you ever thought ‘Its good but it could be perfect if it only had a few more of this type of dish’?Think you could come up with a menu that ticks all the boxes? Would you be prepared to collaborate with other contributors to help shape a bone fide a la carte?I’m working on a project due to open in the near future and was curious to see what people in the blogosphere and the web could come up with given the chance to have a say on a cafe/restaurant menu.So here’s an opportunity to contribute to a very real menu!.There are a few guidelines:Location: rural waterside Tasmania (cant give too much away!)Trading hours: breakfast and lunch, seven daysBreakfast menu: 10 itemsLunch menu: 12 to 15 itemsPrice point: nothing above $20Wording: very little jargonStaff: little hospitality experienceAll contributions must be validated by a legitimate email address with your submissions. Anonymous contributions will not be accepted.

You can also Tweet your menu suggestions here: @stevencumper
You can submit individual dishes or whole menus and I’ll post the growing list as it evolves and then we’ll whittle down the final contenders.
All contributors will be acknowledged on the menu
That’s all for now. I’m not able to divulge the location due to a confidentiality agreement but will answer other enquiries.
Have a crack and hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers Steve

Ok we're off. Thanks to Tanya Murray who got the ball rolling!

Breakfast ideas

• Tanya Murray- coddled egg, it's a meal in a cup. You could salmon, chive and soft cheese or ham and cherry tomato and a tasty cheese. Served with simple toast soldiers. How about old fashioned tomato jam on toast with bacon. For something different what about a simple fish cake (a good way to use yesterday's left overs)
• Stew Woods-Eggs Benedict on Haloumi (or a Haloumi hash) would light my breakfast fire! 
• Roz MacAllen-Freshly made crumpets, nothing like that ever offered in restaurants/cafes but I have another beef, the descriptions on menus, keep finding menus that need lots of interpretation. Just had chilli squid in cafe in Tamar area. They added a ladleful of chilli sauce, over the top of the fried squid. Not even hot chilli, just tasted like commercial bottle tomato sauce with a miniscule amount of chilli. Expected with description that it would be cooked in chopped chilli, oil and possibly garlic.
• Asher Gilding-Toasted banana bread with salted caramel butter (even though salted caramel is played out this is delicious). Bacon, Brie and mushroom baguette. Pancakes with banana, bacon and maple syrup.

Lunch ideas  

• Winsor Dobbin-How abour rabbit pies, or old-fashioned steak and kidney. Gourmet hamburgers, and, yes, like the idea of fishcakes.
• Bob Danbergs-all good and you could make cakes as chunky seafood with salmon, white fish and pra. premature send! not prayer or pram...prawns. Had cakes like that from Angelakis Bros. Nice with a Asian salad
• Stu Addison-"gourmet hamburgers are so last week..."
• Noelene Ejekert-v popular in my house is burnt eggplant slow cooked with summer tomatoes and garlic/Harissa ie "zaalouk" great w lamb
• Roslyn MacAllan-if the new restaurant is by the water, fish/seafood pie over Winsor's meat pies
• Jo Cook-Moules-frites! French fries & mussels....by the water...can't get better...oh a cold cider, or beer, or a vino. I'd make the trip for that if was done with excellence ( ;

Victorian Road Trip de-brief

So I had this wild plan. Do a Victorian country roadtrip taking in five restaurants in four days. Some said it wasn’t possible. Others said I was crazy to attempt such a thing. My gut felt otherwise and so after weeks of training to lose weight, eat healthily and maintaining a discipline of regimented exercise I was ready to commit my gut and the rest of me, to the trip.

I was keen to see firsthand why the restaurants I had chosen to visit were not just surviving in their rural and in some cases, remote locations, but they were positively thriving. Of course it helps that the people behind each enterprise are committed, passionate and highly skilled, their reputations preceding them however as many people know, it takes more than this to be successful in food and this is distilled further when you throw a rural locale into the mix. It even made the Australian on what must've been a slow news day.

Wanting to concentrate on the west and north, leaving the east for another time, I whittled my list down to five establishments. This was based purely on the opening times of the venues and the time I could afford to be away from the café.

Many country restaurants, it could be argued, do the bulk of their trade from Thursday to Sunday. In fact many I researched are only open these days so that pruned a few off my list straight away. Also I had to take into consideration the travel time between towns and the rests I’d need along the way to keep fatigue at bay.

The restaurants that made the itinerary were: Loam in Drysdale, The Royal Mail in Dunkeld, Sunnybrae in Birregurra, The Lake House in Daylesford and The Provenance in Beechworth.

And so through my bookings the shape of my driving map began to materialize. It went like this: Sunday, Melbourne to Drysdale on the Bellarine Peninsula for lunch, then off to Dunkeld in the Western district on the edge of the Grampians for dinner. Monday, drive to Warrnambool, on to Camperdown and through Colac before dropping in for lunch at Birregurra then it was off to Geelong, for the night. Early Tuesday, I set forth for Ballarat and onto Daylesford where my lunch reservation awaited. That day I explored the region and visited nearby Hepburn for a casual dinner. Finally Wednesday dawned and the longest stretch of driving lay before me. After a hearty breakfast I set out stopping at Trentham to taste some incredible wood fired sourdough at the Red Beard Bakery and Kyneton to view the restaurant precinct of Piper Street. Then onto the monotony of the Hume from Seymour, turned off to the Alpine road, through Oxley and Milawa before stopping at Myrtleford for a taste of the freshest and most delicious butter I have ever tasted. My final destination for dinner was in Beechworth, a mere twenty minutes away and upon arrival I cruised its broad streets and majestic avenues of Plane trees in the low afternoon sun to get a feel for the town.

On the journey it was amazing to see the landscape change around me. I was expecting to see an aridity of a remembered western district but I hurtled through some of the most verdant paddocks of the trip much to my surprise. What also struck me were the numerous cattle breeds that reflected the pastures on which they sustained themselves and their intended ultimate purpose, flicking from dairy to beef and back again numerous times. Sheep of course were omnipresent throughout the whole road trip and though I assume I ventured near some piggeries, none were obvious. There were a few chicken and egg producers along the way but they tended to be bit publicity shy save for one remarkable example between Geelong and Ballarat.

I also noticed a few signs of farms selling organic and conventional vegetables though I didn’t see as many roadside stalls as one does here in Tassie? All of the restaurants I visited engage with growers in their area and some even have their own gardens supplying much or part of what they use on their menus. Anyone who has ever tried to live off what they grow will tell you that it is a very difficult, time consuming and logistically challenging undertaking and even more so if you are doing it commercially for a restaurant. I suspect that much of the impetus for embarking on a kitchen garden would be to access fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit that one cannot easily procure when remotely located and the freedom of growing exactly what you require and to the size that you want.

My road trip confirmed for me that an encounter with excellence is an experience that people will travel for and where the oft quoted line which has become a cliché ‘Build it and they will come’ from the movie ‘Field of Dreams’- rings so true.

Perhaps travellers are seeking a re-connection to the plants, animals and country in which we all get our sustenance and are looking beyond the confines of the cities to achieve this? To me, there is a palpable difference between eating in the context of the built environment and that of the rural surrounds. The former must embellish and embroider the provenance of its food currency in order to attract custom above the white noise of competition whereas the latter doesn’t need to scramble for the same sort of traction, as it resonates from within like the hum of the bush in spring, validated by being in situ.

gate to Loam

the Grampians

a Warnambool institution

Birregurra bound

from the road

 images of Daylesford

images from Daylesford

inside Frangos + Frangos

 Breakfast and Beer

Trenthams Famous bakery

John tending the Scotch oven

sadly closed

 Trenthams du Fermier

 Myrtleford

 Hepburn's Darmagi

 a name from the past in Kyneton

 Myrtlefords finest

Beechworth

the Provenance

So to the food.

This is not a 'critque' of the work of other chefs but merely my observations and thoughts on some wonderful meals. Sorry no Photos of the Lake House-goy caught in engaging conversation and forgot to snap!

The multi course degustation menu is to chefs what the concept album is for prog-rockers of the 70’s, think Mike Oldfield, Emerson Lake & Palmer and of course Pink Floyd. It’s cerebral, thoughtful, introspective and very personal. It also highlights for me the fragility that exists between diner and chef, a foot wrong and both are in disappointment-land. I love this high-wire act of technical bravura and kitchen wizardry however I tend to get a bit restless after a couple of hours at the table so I was a bit pensive as I was seated near the window which afforded the most glorious view overlooking the expansive olive grove at Loam. I was also dealing with some pangs of guilt, as I was about to consume more food in the next few days that millions of people eat in a month and wrestling with the notion that this whole folly was a first-world indulgence of the highest calibre. I reasoned though that it was my hard earned money that I had decided to spend and spend it in businesses with a similar if superior standing than my own in the country. Jobs, producers and a wider rural economy were relying on gastronomes like myself to keep the tills flush with coinage.

Loam

So steadying my nerves I strolled in.

There’s no ‘menu’ as such here but rather a procession of seasonal, local and foraged items, expertly cooked and presented with the restrained hand of a ‘less is more’ disciple. You choose either the five course or seven course offers. I made an effort to take a shot of eat dish with my i-phone and documented what I ate also, this helped me pass the time in my own company as well as chatting to the amiable and enthusiastic staff.

Some dishes resonated with me more than others and perhaps if I were the kind of person who looked for a literal manifestation of what was described, I might be disappointed however the sum of the menu was balanced and not leaving me bloated and uncomfortable. The diner is presented with their menu at the end of the meal and I crosschecked my own scribbling’s with it as one would a golf scorecard!

When the time capsule is prized open in a hundred years from now it will contains menus from our restaurants of the day and highlight their love affair with minimalist language. Written in point form, devoid of any hint of technique, any clue of how it might arrive and delivered as one would read the contents of an Ikea flat packed table: nuts, bolts, wooden table top, wooden legs etc. in that cool, detached clichéd way we associate with the Scandinavians. I find it curious that the obvious love that they have for produce, is not reflected in the words of the menu. I don’t mean overly floral adjectives but this type of menu relies heavily on the sophistication of the diner to ‘get it’ and to ‘trust’ the cooking. Does this limit the appeal of a place? Perhaps but then again if people are seeking it out then what does it matter?

There were some unusual pairings like beef fat and squid which if I’m honest, didn’t appeal at first when it was explained to me but upon eating I was convinced. Though these components were but two of the five listed, they were the ones that stood out as the more challenging.

Loam has a reputation for its inventive and curious ice cream concoctions, amongst other things and I was asked my opinion on what flavour I thought the scoop was. To me it tasted like malted barley or wort to the home brewer but when it was revealed to me that it was in fact caramelised onion, it made sense immediately. I finished the meal with some exquisite and dainty petit fours: a lemon tart and some Lilliput scones and jam. My tastes and perception and I’ll admit, my rusted-on prejudices were tested today. Did I enjoy the experience? Unequivocally yes, was it was I was expecting? No. I pondered this over the bill. I sat there observing my experience in the third person and I suppose by my unusually reserved reaction I was left a bit un-moved? Maybe I’m simply too old, to out of the loop or too jaded. Either way, I’m sure it was me, not you, if you catch my drift.

The team in the kitchen looked weary when I popped my head to say g’day and I was flabbergasted to see only Aaron the chef and another chef in the kitchen. The work they must have done to produce that lunch was bewildering, made me exhausted just thinking about it and also made me re-calibrate up another notch on my respect-o-meter.

So after consulting my map, thanking the staff I was out the screen door, into the afternoon sun and a long drive to the Royal Mail.

the Royal Mail

I arrived at The RM a half hour before my dinner reservation so I had time to freshen up in the very well appointed rooms. I took an effort not to lie back on the huge bed and snooze but I knew I wouldn’t get up if I did.

The RM plays its roles as local pub and one of the great dining experiences in the country with a considered ease and sure-footedness. There are not too many establishments that can pull this off in my opinion, as the tendency is to blur the offering to cater for the middle ground. Not so here, there’s delineation in the dining room not unlike the DMZ on the Berlin wall, minus the guards and I suppose the Eastern Bloc queues. There might be a divide between the bistro and the dining room but the attention to detail I saw exiting the kitchen gave no hint of a gear-change-down-in-quality type offering here.

So before me was an eleven course Dego (see how I’ve familiarized it now I’m a veteran!) which was different from Loams in the way it had a lyrical almost Pam Ayers quality about the wording that I half expected it to rhyme.

‘Marron and globe artichoke, gem lettuce and rose’ and ‘pigeon and beetroot, rhubarb and charred radicchio’ for instance.

The flavours here seemed pronounced and profound. I was intrigued by many of the mergers and noticed like at Loam, the tradition of serving food on plates was going the way of the dinosaurs with rocks, boards, slate and glass being used.

My favourite flavour combination though was from the humble parsnip. It had been cooked in syrup, de-hydrated, scorched and paired with cream fraiche, blueberries, apple and fennel. The parsnip / cream taste reminded me very much of cornflakes and milk which I associate with happy memories as a kid getting my very own small box of them for brekkie whilst staying at a motel. Not sure if that was the intended response but for me it was still a very satisfying one.

I was also beginning to notice an absence of any kind of starch in the meals. Spuds, rice, pasta etc. were clearly absent. Perhaps this is a way to negotiate the possibility of Tanking whilst eating your way through so many courses?

I was very impressed that here we were, three and a half hours give or take from Melbourne on a Sunday evening and the place was full to the brim with guests.

I was lucky to chat to Dan the chef and thanked him and his team for what was an exceptional meal before I made my way wearily to my room and the crisp comfort of fresh linen and glorious sleep.

Next morn after a simple buffet breakfast and a few coffees I hit the road for the venerable Sunnybrae restaurant and cooking school. I had to swing by Warrnambool for a nostalgic hamburger at Kermonds, a business from another era still doing a roaring trade, immune to fashion and spin, doesn’t rely on its so-kitsch-its-hip fit-out and lets the magnificence of its simply prepared burgers do the talking. Good.

I arrived at sleepy Birregurra the day after the Fair had been on and it seemed everyone was having a kip so I relied on signage to point me in the right direction. Finally I spot the gates and I’m up a snaking driveway, past rows and rows of edible vegetation, fruit and nut trees, the diatrus of a busy working garden and toward the rambling homestead and the gravitas of finally meeting George with whom I have corresponded online for a few years begins to settle on me.

I arrived at Sunnybrae just as one of the cooking classes were coming to an end and my trepidation vanished as George immediately put me at ease with his warm greeting and genuine hospitality. Pretty soon we were chinwagging and swapping stories as the students prepared the rest of the meal, the long table awaited us, an air of civility and grace permeated every nook of the house and I felt totally in my element. Lunch consisted of fresh home grown asparagus and artichokes with a Seville orange Hollandaise, smoked free-range turkey thigh from the wood-oven with a peppery remoulade and finished with a perfect soufflé and two types of freshly churned ice cream. Sitting there in the room with conversation bubbling around me I soaked it all in, drifting in and out of the delirium of feeling fully satiated. George noticed my contentment and gave me a cheeky wink. If I were to use a literary metaphor I would say he managed to get his message across with the minimum of fuss, his parsimonious usage of the language of food belied the generosity of the three courses.

I got the impression that he feels if you can’t say what you mean concisely then no amount of meandering and ponderous paragraphs will do it for you either, but that’s just me guessing.

I gave George and Di a gift from Cygnet as I left and he gave me some flour he had grown and milled, before I headed for the big smoke of Melbourne. As I drove, the paddocks and dairy cows flashed by giving way to industrial parks, suburbs and white noise the thought of that simple and delicious meal kept me sustained.

After a night in Melbs I was away early toward Daylesford through Ballarat.

the Lake House

The Lakehouse is Daylesford is the Lakehouse and vice versa. They are synonymous with each other, forged over three decades on the anvil of a growing interest in regional food, tourism and the tree/sea changers for whom this town was one of the first to attract city people to live here. It is a big business. It employs many people. It has remained at the top of its game for so many years that now that it is regarded by many me included, as the benchmark venue for a successful regional restaurant and deluxe accommodation model.

The restaurant is plush, the views are postcard and the attention to detail is obvious.

The menu, though in a conventional format, has a few nods to some of the techniques a la mode but is too canny to be conned into some sort of faddy Emperors new clothes territory-this Wolf has the street-smarts to know the real sheep from the clothing.

The wolf in question is Alla Wolf –Tasker and sadly she is not on site the day I eat lunch but you know what? I know it’s going to be smashing. It is.

The service here is top notch and I am treated royally. I enjoy an entrée, a main and a dessert. The kitchen sends me out their signature entrée of smoked eel and bacon, sour cream and beetroots, for which I was grateful. The menu says exactly what gets put down in front of me. The cooking is precise, polished and exactly what I would expect of a place of this calibre. I loved the rabbit loin, cotechino and cassoulet, my kind of food. It was a delicious well-rounded meal and one that I could identify with, having come through kitchens with a similar approach to cooking over the years.

It’s clear why the Lakehouse looms large as a Titan in the Australian country restaurant scene-it delivers the goods.

I spent the night in Daylesford and ate in the very hip looking Darmagi and from the simple but well executed food, I reckon its one to watch.

 Inside Darmagi

Salumi alla Darmagi

The next day I had brekkie at the quirky Breakfast and Beer, a café that shared a similar aesthetic, which I loved, to my own café. 

The Istra bacon and free-range eggs were packed full of flavour!

inside Breakfast + Beer

It took me all day to get to Beechworth and I arrived in the late afternoon as the shadows began to stretch and the magnificent avenues of russet coloured plane trees were dappling a golden hue through their foliage. What a pretty town.

the Provenance

The Provenance looks imposing from the outside but it’s anything but when you are greeted by the affable Michael and Jeanette. This year the Good Food Guide awarded, ‘Chef of the year’ to Michael Ryan and I was very excited by the prospect of dining here. I unpacked in my deluxe room, which was finished with all the accoutrements of luxury. Every time I enter one of these lavishly appointed rooms a mini clock appears in my conscience and counts down the time until I have to reluctantly vacate it and go back to the real world. So after dressing for dinner, which I think is a sadly overlooked custom these days, I made my way to the dining room.

Here you are presented with a menu but I simply put myself at the mercy of Michael and asked to be fed until I was replete. What followed was a unique juxtaposition of a Japanophile chef with feet firmly planted in his region with some Italian heritage lapping at the edges. This could explain a menu, which combines Tofu, kimchee daikon, ginger and prawn cracker with chestnut pasta, Grana padano, bottarga, clams and chorizo. In less assured hands this could be a mish mash of cherry picked cuisines assembled from a menu-by-committee but in Michaels hands it all makes perfect sense. A dish that really stood out for me was the grilled lettuce, surf clams, chorizo and bottarga. The crumbed short rib, daikon puree and kimchee, was a showstopper.

The meal ended with a citrus flourish, lemon curd and ginger breadcrumbs. I got to talk to Michael at length about the issues he faces as a restaurateur in a regional area and was not surprised to hear we share similar concerns. It was a meal worthy of being my last stop in my gastronomical tour, the jewel in its crown perhaps. The next day I hit the road and ruminated over the quality and diversity of restaurant experiences on offer in Regional Victoria. I wish Tassie could have similar regional beacons dotted throughout the state however I think that will be a long time coming.