Attica

Ben Shewry tells a great Australian story, for a Kiwi. His food is connected to its roots (literally, there's a kitchen garden out back) like few other chefs'. You might find sweet, rare wallaby; pearl meat given spark by beads of finger lime; luscious marron in a chorizo broth; the signature potato cooked in earth; one dessert of rare native fruits on sheep's milk yoghurt beneath ruby native-currant shaved ice; another that unites seasonal fruit, honey and meringue in a miniature beehive box. Staff are as polished as you'd expect. The small rooms, dramatic in black, with spotlit pools of creamy white, make the most of close-ish quarters. They are often full of food tourists and dish-snapping diners, as befits Shewry's now global profile as a proponent of nature-based cuisine, despite the suburban location of this restaurant co-owned by two doctors. By the petits fours of speckled, salted-caramel chocolate eggs, every diner should have their own tale to tell. Attica is the best it's been.