Highlands unearthed

Wet maize and pine needles on the online menu at Biota in Bowral tempts us to stop there for lunch en route to Sydney, but the clincher is the restaurant's own kitchen garden. Biota Dining has two chef's hats in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide 2013 and won the Sustainability Award.

While the driver's dog is fed in the car park, I wander among raised beds in a gated herb garden. Beside a large pond on which wood ducks were paddling, a pair of guard-bird geese stir themselves and honk and hiss at me.

The warm fire and smartly designed interior of Biota's informal lounge bar, and the staff, are welcoming. No bookings are necessary for the bright casual bar that overlooks a fountain and open fire in a large courtyard. Naturally, we order the wet maize, forest mushrooms and garlic oil. It is a terracotta dish of warm golden polenta, toasted red-gilled mushrooms and crumbles of goat's cheese. Delicious. Sharing dishes is encouraged and we both relish the beetroot-cured trout with fennel, yoghurt and compressed cucumber. A glass of Pulpit Rock pinot noir from the Southern Highlands and a Bin 478 Single Origin Roasters flat white has us ready to explore the kitchen garden.

Chef-owner of Biota James Viles says his mother, landscaper Cathy Viles, is responsible for the mechanics of what is planted, and the herb garden went in six months before Biota opened two years ago. The 300 square metres of raised garden beds are fully irrigated by water pumped from a natural spring on site. They grow fresh herbs such as borage and chamomile, used as garnishes, plus radishes, dill and pineapple sage that is used in drinks and for sorbets. Seeds are propagated in a small hothouse, and there are young shoots such as chickpea.

Viles grew up in the Southern Highlands. Finding produce on the doorstep and being true to its roots is the philosophy that drove the name Biota. He returned to Bowral following six years in the Middle East, where he he says ran six restaurants with 110 chefs and was importing food from five countries.

The year-old, 700-square-metre kitchen garden behind the restaurant is filled with brassicas, beetroot, purslane, huge plants of silverbeet and rhubarb, artichokes and rocket for winter. Beds are topped with a fine layer of lucerne from a local farmer to protect young seedlings during frost. Viles laughs about my experience with the geese, which came from his suckling pig farmer at Red Leaf Farm at Fitzroy Falls. ''They tried doing their thing on the dam but it turns out they are two males,'' he says. The dam is fed by water from the natural spring and is a yabby pond that they dug to make it larger. It filled up with water in just three days.

Biota's table ducks come from Thirlmere, an area full of pine trees, and Viles was inspired by their habitat so serves the pine needles with salt - a ''rustic gloomy dish''. Mushrooms are foraged by the Biota team and they have gathered 80 kilograms from Belanglo forest but only pick slippery jacks and saffron milk caps or pine mushrooms. We leave Biota and take the dog for a walk behind Corbett Street, along a rivulet that has been planted for Vietnam veterans with rows of white cherry trees.

''We use that area for dessert, Mum's roses and the blossoms which flower for six weeks each year, to serve with peaches and liquid nitrogen,'' Viles says. ''It is a gentle and humble dish.''

The Southern Highlands farmers markets are held at Biota on the last Sunday of each month. The producers are hand-picked by Viles and the Biota team and offer suckling pig, hazelnuts, honey, seasonal fruit and vegetables, ciders and wines, preserves and cakes.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.