Leura Garage

References to this breezy, popular diner's former life as a garage are everywhere. A pile of tyres sits on top of one wall, old car exhausts adorn a wine shelf, and automotive tools such as spanners and pliers are cleverly embedded in the poured concrete floor. These days, however, people come for a different type of fuel, such as weekend breakfasts of dill scrambled eggs with smoked Nundle trout, lunches of steak sandwiches with onion jam, and dinners of saltbush lamb with eggplant caviar. The locals love the pizza, made from organic, unbleached and stone-ground flour. A fluorescently bright pumpkin version is a beauty, with lush blobs of goat's cheese and melting caramelised onions. Alternatively, start with a well-stocked meat platter of prosciutto, salami, carpaccio and preserved wild onions, then move on to a massive plate of pasta - spaghetti with meatballs, perhaps, or capellini with lobster. Baked stone fruit with meringue gelato and hazelnuts is all the reason you need to pull in for a pit stop.