This intimate restaurant wows with its hyperlocal, produce-driven menu while showcasing the wines of its neighbours and small-batch spirits of one of its owners.
There’s a concise list of Adelaide Hills wines, including strong chardonnay representation from both new-wave and long-established neighbours like BK Wines, The Other Right, Murdoch Hill, The Lane and Longview. You can also visit the Ondeen Wine Room, opened in November, to try even more local wines.
But the focus is firmly on Full Circle Spirits – from co-owner Rose Kentish – which sits in harmony with Kane Pollard’s closed-loop cooking. The small-batch, sustainably focused distillery sources botanicals from the South Australian landscape – backyard orange trees, garden thyme, Riverland lemons and organic figs from Kangaroo Island – that are often foraged. They might be turned into orange and bay-leaf gin, scorched-fig liqueur, a limited-edition “kumquatcello” and a super-small-batch green-walnut liqueur – a local expression of Italy’s nocino – made with walnuts from an abandoned walnut grove 10 minutes from the property.
Pull up a chair in the sunroom – with views out to the vines, pond, forest, and cherry blossoms on the balcony – for an idyllic lunch of ricotta gnudi, AKA gnocchi-like dumplings, sheathed in zucchini blossoms and served with cultured buttermilk followed by Port Broughton whiting baked in charred cabbage and saltbush butter. Or a lentil and wild venison pie wrapped in puff pastry and beetroot leaves.
Like the drinks, the food is made with locally found and grown produce – pine needles from the property’s pine trees that zhuzh up green olives, calendula from the garden, which is paired with saltbush meringue and finger-lime curd in a pre-dessert dessert, and the honeycomb produced on site crowning a silky smooth crème caramel. Avoiding waste is also big on the agenda: spent grain from Full Circle Spirits whisky might be dried, ground into flour and turned into sourdough focaccia, while the mother from the house bread becomes crisp tartlets filled with radish and apple “tartare”, or lavash crackers paired with cheese and preserves. A seasonal spring dish uses excess ricotta whey and a whole cauliflower – stem and braised leaves and all – served with smoked cream, panna cotta and spring garlic salsa.
