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The Age Good Food Guide 2017: Regional restaurants shine

Janne Apelgren

There are signs things have changed around the farming town of Birregurra since Brae opened three years ago. For starters, there is a Tesla tucked between the utes on main street, and a limo driver waiting to ferry passengers back to the airport after their daytrip from Sydney for lunch. Says chef Dan Hunter, "It's rare now to have a service with no international guests."

Further west, at Dunkeld, a pilot is designated driver for a group that has flown in by private jet to sample The Royal Mail's bordeauxs and burgundies. Marketing manager Kylie Schurmann says three helicopters dropped off a dozen diners recently. "It takes 45 minutes from the CBD, but if they've got time they fly down over the Grampians and home along the Great Ocean Road."

Such dedicated gastronauts know Victoria's world-class country restaurants offer destination dining worth not just a detour, but a trip on their own.

Regional restaurants are competing like never before with city places for awards in The Age Good Food Guide. This year, five of the 16 awards have gone to regional restaurants, including the top gong, Restaurant of the Year, to Brae. And there are more regional restaurants than ever sporting hats (28 compared with 26 last year).

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"Thirty years ago you took a picnic when you travelled to the country, or maybe ate at a pub," says Alla Wolf-Tasker, whose Daylesford restaurant, Lake House, is consistently judged one of the state's best. "Now you can't drive for an hour out of Melbourne in any direction without hitting a great cafe, cellar door, or good restaurant."

Find them among the vines in the Yarra Valley and on the Mornington Peninsula, in handsome gold-rush towns, where mineral springs bubble to the surface, tucked into the north-east's mountain valleys, or on the coast where fishermen ply the southern oceans.

You could happily spend weeks wandering between the jewels in Victoria's culinary crown – aside from the hatted restaurants there are countless places along the state's highways and byways delivering excellent local produce, good coffee and wine. The five regional restaurants featured here have on-site accommodation. And remember to pop an Esky in the boot: you'll pass farm gates, cellar doors and dairies offering a pantry full of produce for the ride home.

Accommodation at Brae in Birregurra.
Accommodation at Brae in Birregurra.Supplied

Brae

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Come for: World-class fine dining in an elegant country cottage.

Stay for: Luxe king suites, where breakfast hampers include the house wood-fired bread for toast.

Dan Hunter's garden-girt Birregurra restaurant now has accommodation replete with record players, original Marvin Gaye pressings and full wine cellars, solidifying Brae's reputation as Victoria's most detail-oriented but also relaxing restaurant. It's the gentle woodsmoke in a dining room flooded with daylight, and sparkling service by staff who genuinely like their jobs. But mostly it's Hunter's cooking, where titanic technique is pressed into the service of making food taste of itself, but better. In the crisp, aged pekin duck barbecued over its own fat-soaked straw; or slippery jacks in the sweetest beef broth enhanced with egg yolk, there is brilliance over bells and whistles.

4285 Cape Otway Road, Birregurra, 03 5236 2226, braerestaurant.com

While you're there

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Monday's convivial lunches are a favourite with off-duty hospo folk. When Hunter gets a day off, look out for him at Bespoke Harvest guest house and eatery in Forrest. He also sends guests to Igni in Geelong, Ravens Creek Farm stall and cafe in Moriac, and Gentle Annie berry farm for pick-your-own.

Crayfish, macadamia, blood lime and salt bush at Fen.
Crayfish, macadamia, blood lime and salt bush at Fen.Supplied

Fen

Come for: Native coastal modernism.

Stay for: Pristine starry nights and rockpool-hopping on Pea Soup Beach. Adjoining accommodation at Seacombe House, or spoil yourself at Drift House.

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The best way to enjoy Ryan Sessions' intricate dishes of skill, imagination and beauty is to settle into Fen's calming Scandi-chic dining room for a wild multi-course ride across Victoria's south-west coast. Cray medallions swim in a delicate seaweed broth with samphire and native limes. Great Ocean duck breast pairs with pine mushrooms, parsnip crisps and native thyme oil-anointed duck jus. Kirstyn Session's warm hospitality and a carefully considered drinks list make dining here even more memorable.

22 Sackville Street, Port Fairy, 03 5568 3229, fenportfairy.com.au

While you're there

Coffin Sally does good pizza, and has a cocktail bar that slams out decent drinks. Ryan Sessions' go-to for coffee and breakfast is the Farmer's Wife. It's down a laneway. If the yellow bike is out the front, it's open. Crawford River Wines, an hour up the road from Fen, is justly famous for its riesling. The cellar door is open by appointment. Sessions also recommends the wines of nearby Hochkirch and Henty Estate. He's a fan of Warrnambool's blossoming hospitality scene, too, recommending Brightbird Espresso and Rough Diamond for coffee, and hip new bar Lucy.

The Lake House dining room is complete with crisp white linens.
The Lake House dining room is complete with crisp white linens.Supplied
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Lake House

Come for: Good food and exemplary hospitality.

Stay for: Gorgeous rooms make a sleep-over irresistible. Brilliant breakfasts are a given.

The dining room is luxurious, the lake-view windows a witness to each season, and service is polished and warm. There is a story behind every ingredient: the forest mushrooms foraged daily when abundant, the yabbies netted in local dams. Alla Wolf-Tasker's Russian heritage is threaded through the menu, too. Her father bartered home-made vodka for eels; now smoked eel always features. Technique is a strong point but it's applied with expansive joy. That is exemplified by the quail, a fiddly bird made bountiful with careful filleting, then basted with tarragon butter and smoked over pine needles.

4 King Street, Daylesford, 03 5348 3329, lakehouse.com.au

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While you're there

Lake House has an appealing sibling, Wombat Hill House cafe, in the botanic gardens. Owner-chef Alla Wolf-Tasker lists nearby Passing Clouds Winery's cellar door as a great spot for a simple lunch of roast chook or charcuterie. "Mondays it's full of locals," she says, as is popular new kid on the block, Surly Goat bistro in Hepburn Springs. Wolf-Tasker urges visitors to visit one of the region's weekend farmers' markets, too.

Wooragee strawberries, Stanley apples and mochi at Provenance, Beechworth.
Wooragee strawberries, Stanley apples and mochi at Provenance, Beechworth.Supplied

The Provenance

Come for: Inventive contemporary dining.

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Stay for: Four chic suites with bountiful house-made breakfasts on-site, and from September, three modern villas overlooking the nearby gorge.

The gold-rush-era bank Japanophile chef Michael Ryan has occupied since 2010 has had its fusty Victoriana softened by delicate restoration. Look down at the linen-draped table for more well composed artistry, perhaps house-made silken tofu in an enamelled bowl, shining as if lit from within. Dishes can be simultaneously refined and luxe, as with puffed grains across creamy eggplant alongside goat confited to collapse in duck fat. The vegetarian degustation is a marvel of rustic produce – mushrooms, turnips, carrots – reinvented through pairings with sake lees, house-made miso, fermented fruits. Desserts also crossbreed sweet, savoury and surprising.

86 Ford Street, Beechworth, 03 5728 1786, theprovenance.com.au

While you're there

During ski season, Michael Ryan operates Yama at Mount Hotham with Hamish Nugent and Rachel Reed, who also run the terrific Tani restaurant in Bright. In Beechworth, Ryan recommends Peddler Cafe, and hospitality veteran Rocco Esposito's Project Forty Nine, for great coffee and "simple food done well" (they make wine, too). Ryan sends guests to Pennyweight Winery "for interesting wines and sherries".

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Inside the Royal Mail Hotel dining room at Dunkeld
Inside the Royal Mail Hotel dining room at Dunkeld. Supplied

Royal Mail Hotel

Come for: A gastronomic adventure.

Stay for: The eggs benedict at breakfast come from the hotel's free-ranging hens.

As a unique selling proposition, the Royal Mail Hotel's pitch is solid: a remote country hotel harvesting ingredients on site for modern dishes with wines from a world-class cellar. If it doesn't grow around here, or it's not in season, it won't appear in the comfortably carpeted L-shaped dining room. You might eat rhubarb from the organic kitchen garden turned into fruit leather rolls dotted with chicken liver parfait; and pink lamb loin and crisp belly, from the owners' flock, with earthy sunflower seeds and jerusalem artichoke. Service is polished and proper, with nuanced wine matches.

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98 Parker Street (Glenelg Highway), Dunkeld, 03 5577 2241, royalmail.com.au

While you're there

If you're staying in the hotel's bluestone cottages on Mount Sturgeon station, take the beautiful hike into town along the river for lunch at the hotel's more relaxed Parker Street Project. Chef Robin Wickens recommends starting with Greenvale Farm pork scratchings, a "perfect bar snack with a Prickly Moses Spotted Ale". He also likes The Story Wines riesling, made from Henty region grapes. Staff will run you back to your accommodation. Owners Allan and Maria Myers open their bountiful private gardens to hotel guests on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Chef Robin Wickens lists his favourite local produce as Skipton eel: "Buy it smoked from the only service station in Skipton. It's delicious." In nearby Hamilton, Wickens says, "Tosca Browns is great for coffee and does a good breakfast."

Handmade ravioli at Stefano's Cellar, Mildura.
Handmade ravioli at Stefano's Cellar, Mildura.Supplied

Stefano's

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Come for: Benchmark Italian cooking in a magical vault.

Stay for: Mildura's celebrated grande dame, The Grand Hotel.

Stefano de Pieri – the don of Mildura hospitality – is back at the helm of his flagship restaurant in the cellars of Mildura's Grand Hotel, where a parade of courses typifies everything Italian cooking triumphs at. Like using leftovers (a grilled slab of yesterday's bread soaking in dill-bright lamb broth) or pulling the best ingredients from the surrounds. It's bitter weed souffles, and cheesy local butter on bread made beery from de Pieri's Mildura Brewery yeast. Murray cod comes as bronzed tranches napped in syrupy beef and lamb jus, with its own crisped collar and wings alongside. Finish with cannoli. There is nothing else like this table-lined tunnel that smells of cool stone and tomorrow's ragu.

Grand Hotel, 18 Langtree Avenue, Mildura, 03 5022 0881, stefano.com.au

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You might spot Stefano de Pieri taking coffee at 27 Deakin Cafe, where you can buy his preserves. He and his wife Donata Carrazza also have a welcoming pub in the Mildura Brewery. De Pieri recommends Pizzeria Divina as "one of the most authentic in regional Victoria" and has a soft spot for Thai-riffic, for the authenticity of its food, too.

Local knowledge

Here's where the chefs visit on their days off.

Society garlic potatoes at Igni in Geelong.
Society garlic potatoes at Igni in Geelong.Josh Robenstone

Dan Hunter, Brae, Birregurra

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Bespoke Harvest, 16 Grant Street, Forrest, 03 5236 6446, bespokeharvest.com.au

Igni, Ryan Place, Geelong, 03 5222 2266, restaurantigni.com

Ravens Creek Farm, 742 Hendy Main Road, Moriac, ravenscreekfarm.com.au

Gentle Annie, 520 Pennyroyal Valley Road, Pennyroyal, 03 5236 3391, gentleannie.net.au

Ryan Sessions, Fen, Port Fairy

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Coffin Sally, 33 Sackville Street, Port Fairy, 03 5568 2618, coffinsally.com.au

Farmer's Wife, 47 Sackville Street, Port Fairy, 03 5568 2843

Crawford River Wines, 741 Condah-Hotspur Upper Road, Condah, 03 5578 2267, crawfordriverwines.com

Drift House, 98 Gipps Street, Port Fairy, drifthouse.com.au

Brightbird Espresso, 157 Liebig Street, Warrnambool, 03 5562 5749, brightbird.com.au

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Rough Diamond, 203 Koroit Street, Warrnambool, 03 5560 5707, roughdiamondcoffee.com.au

Lucy, 2/167 Koroit Street, Warrnambool

Alla Wolf-Tasker, Lake House, Daylesford

Wombat Hill House, Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens, Daylesford, 03 4373 0099, wombathillhouse.com.au

The Surly Goat, 3 Tenth Street, Hepburn Springs, 03 5348 4628, thesurglygoat.com.au

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Passing Clouds, 30 Roddas Lane, Musk, 03 5348 5550, passingclouds.com.au

Michael Ryan, Provenance, Beechworth

Yama Kitchen & Bar, Lot 1F Great Alpine Road, Mount Hotham, 03 5759 3456, yama.net.au

Peddler Cafe, 40 Ford Street, Beechworth, 03 5728 1843

Project Forty Nine, 46 Ford Street, Beechworth, projectfortynine.com.au

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Pennyweight Winery, 13 Pennyweight Lane, Beechworth, 03 5728 1747, pennyweight.com.au

Robin Wickens, Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld

Greenvale Farm, greenvalefarm.com.au (not open to public)

The Story wines, thestory.com.au

Tosca Browns, 211 Gray Street, Hamilton, toscabrowns.com

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Stefano de Pieri, Stefano's, Mildura

Stefano's Cafe, 27 Deakin Avenue, Mildura, 03 5021 3627

Mildura Brewery, 20 Langtree Ave, Mildura 03 5022 2988, mildurabrewery.com.au

Pizzeria Divina, 65 Lime Avenue, Mildura

Thai-riffic, 35 Langtree Avenue, Mildura, 03 5021 5225

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People's Choice Award winner Ezard @ Levantine Hill.
People's Choice Award winner Ezard @ Levantine Hill.Earl Carter

Day trippers

Enlist a designated driver and head to the following destination restaurants, all within easy reach of Melbourne.

Igni, Geelong Fire-driven dining from chef Aaron Turner and a crack team.

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Ten Minutes By Tractor, Main Ridge Casual elegance meets fine diner in this vineyard cottage.

Ezard @ Levantine Hill, Coldstream Chef Teage Ezard at play in one of the Yarra Valley's grandest new wineries.

The Age Good Food Guide 2017 is on sale in newsagents and bookstores for $14.99 with The Age (usually $24.99), while stocks last. All book purchases receive free access to the new Good Food app.

Janne Apelgren is the co-author of Around The World in 80 Dinners, to be published by Melbourne University Press on November 1, mup.com.au

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