‘It’s truly excellent now’: The Age Good Food Guide Restaurant of the Year O.My, the review

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You’d expect a restaurateur to bring their work home. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that they sketch out new dishes on the couch, sit with a coffee and a laptop at the kitchen table to pay invoices, maybe do a bit of social media while catching some sun on the back step.

But the fact that O.My’s chef and co-owner Blayne Bertoncello recently incubated 50 chickens under lights in his lounge room does seem a little unusual, the kind of scenario that would only happen at O.My, the intensely personal, modestly visionary, outer-suburban eatery that is The Age Good Food Guide’s Vittoria Coffee Restaurant of the Year for 2024.

O.My is different. The brothers who run it – Blayne’s younger brother Chayse oversees the dining room and drinks – produce all their own fruit, vegetables, eggs and honey at market gardens 10 minutes away. The chefs and waiters put seeds in the ground, tend the plants and harvest them. They serve this food, along with other carefully chosen local produce, over adventurous four- and seven-course tasting menus in an intimate, comfortable, 25-seat dining room.

It’s de rigueur for top restaurants to bang on about their connection to farmers, but such a short, direct supply chain is rare. It’s also complicated: the menu-planning runs two years ahead, and there’s no running to the shops for extra basil.

In June, the Bertoncello brothers celebrated 10 years of O.My, which is amazing enough because hospitality is tough. But the milestone becomes more startling when you learn that Blayne was 23 and Chayse just 19 when they launched.

A lot has happened over the decade. There’s been optimism and acclaim, dogged persistence, hands-on renovations, a demoralising fire, a move from butcher shop to post office to the current site, a pandemic, much community- and team-building, and a fair bit of growing up.

The restaurant has always been fun and exciting to visit, but it’s truly excellent now. In previous years, the panic that can come from seasonal bounty has sometimes ended up on the plate. “Did you know you can do 12 things with pumpkin?” has settled into “Can you believe how tasty our pumpkin is?”

It’s calmer. Enjoyment feels like the first principle. You’ll start with a generous array of snacks. Puff pastry is stuffed with a ragu of lamb offcuts and herb salsa, a fruit-tree stick pruned from the farm is threaded with glazed chicken thigh, and a fried pastry circle filled with horseradish and buttermilk gel is drizzled with green garlic oil and topped with edible flowers. It’s spring in a ring: bright and joyous.

Fish is sourced from Corner Inlet’s Luke Anneda. All the boats at this pristine Gippsland Lakes fishery use gentle, purse-seine netting, bringing fish onto the boat one by one. Anneda will often call Blayne from the water to let him know the catch. We had steamed garfish, rolled into an elegant coil, sitting in a fish-and-chicken broth and surrounded by spring shoots and leaves – a dish both bounteous and respectfully restrained.

Remember the chickens? When they’re laying, you’ll get a pasta dish made with the yolks and, for dessert, a meringue that uses the whites. I had fettuccine with an incredible tomato sauce, while you might get tortellini filled with cheese from Butterfly Factory, a local micro-dairy.

Meat chickens come from Cherry Tree Organics, a butcher across the road. I never order chicken breast – it’s generally boring, over-plump and industrial – but the main course here is a reminder that chicken was considered a luxury meat as recently as the 1970s. Cooked in chicken fat, lemon and thyme, the strip of breast is soft, juicy and flavourful, the crisp skin tasting of butter, salt and care. When I chat to Blayne about it later, he’s proud of the chicken, for sure, but he’s also keen to tell me the grilled shallot alongside it took seven months to grow.

The restaurant has always been fun and exciting to visit, but it’s truly excellent now.

Dessert is an assembly of different ways with yacon, a white tuber that lets loose its sweetness when it’s roasted or grilled. Built over an Italian meringue – those egg whites! – you’ll encounter crunch, gentle sourness, caramel sweetness and mellow creaminess as you make your way to the bottom of the bowl.

There’s a completeness to the O.My experience. The tone is delighted and enthusiastic, the service is friendly and unpretentious and everyone seems invested in sharing the joy that’s inherent in growing things and being part of nature’s cycles. We might not all have chicks in our living room, but we can all appreciate the seasons, the work involved in growing good food, and the craft of making it delicious.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine

The Age Good Food Guide 2024 is on sale for $14.95 from newsagents, supermarkets and at thestore.com.au. It features more than 450 Victorian venues, from three-hatted destinations to regional wine bars, lively noodle specialists and 30-year-old icons. Venues listed in the Guide are visited anonymously by professional restaurant critics, who review independently. Venues are chosen at our discretion.