A humble Australian restaurant with its own garden and greenhouse has just been crowned the nation’s best.
The Agrarian Kitchen, tucked away in Tasmania‘s Derwent Valley, a 30 minute drive from Hobart, is the recipient of Gourmet Traveller’s Restaurant of the year award.
Rodney Dunn, of Tetsuya’s, fame relocated to Tasmania and settled in a 19th century school house on the grounds of an old psychiatric institution with a dream to deliver simple produce-driven dining.
Sixteen years later, and the estate now comprises a restaurant, a kiosk and a luscious one acre kitchen garden with a greenhouse that guests wander through before sitting down to enjoy a meal that few of them will ever forget.
Head Chef Stephen Peak draws on the bounty of the The Agrarian’s garden, rich with vibrant clay soil, to create stark, elemental meals that fans are calling ‘insanely great’.
The menu features produce from the state’s rich supply of meats and cheeses to bring together ‘mind blowing’ flavours without any of fine-dining fuss.
Inspired dishes include burrata with fermented lemon, tostada with crayfish and avocado, polenta mushroom and alpine cheese and boysenberry jelly petit fours.
Fans of the New Norfolk culinary institution also rave about the changing menu of cocktails and mocktails spun from fragrant house-made syrups and fermented liquids.
Rodney Dunn has achieved his dream of produce driven food at The Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania where 90 per cent of the food used in the kitchen comes from the garden and greenhouse – and they’ve just won Gourmet Traveller’s best restaurant in Australia
Bresaola made from three year old Dexter X Scottish highland steer from Plenty Provisions is one of the simple and ‘amazing’ dishes that have visitors to the restaurant calling it the ‘most memorable meal’ of their lives
The Agrarian Kitchen’s polenta with buttermilk, goat’s milk alpine cheese and black truffle is ‘stunning’ according to diners
The raspberry and tonic, strawberry and rhubarb collins and the blueberry and sake negroni are three of the kitchen’s popular, punchy tipples.
For a more casual meal, there is the Agrarian Kiosk onsite offering stuffed focaccia-style sandwiches, savoury pastries with lamb, goat’s curd and root vegetables and thick slices of sourdough with tangy cheese and salami.
The kitchen is a hotbed of pickling, preserving, cheese making and bread baking and offers cooking classes to those who want to immerse themselves even more in The Agrarian experience. There are also gardening lessons available.
The manicured grounds host weddings year round and now boast catering by the best kitchen in the country.
News of the win comes as no surprise to fans of the beloved Tasmanian restaurant who are already familiar with the culinary magic that Rodney Dunn and Stephen Peak are spinning, with some calling it their ‘most memorable’ meal ever.
The cosy and enveloping interiors are a perfect setting for the nation’s best dining
French breakfast radish and burnt leek, Tokyo turnip and hempseed and puntarelle and celeriac miso is one of the dishes that has set the TAS culinary institution apart
The ever changing menu draws from the best produce that the garden and the state has on offer
‘This was a transcendental experience, set within a culinary monastery. Exquisite local produce considered, balanced, paired back without ego. I remain enlightened,’ one diner said.
‘I loved everything about this place. The history, the ambience, the energy, the food…It really is an experience that you live,’ another agreed.
‘One of the most incredible meals I’ve ever had. Could not recommend it enough. I’d give it more stars if I could. 11/10,’ a third chimed in.
The restaurant opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday and has a set menu with optional beverage pairings.
Other winners in Gourmet Traveller’s 2024 foodie awards were The Lake House in Daylesford for the Readers Choice Icon Award, and Sydney chef Pasi Petanen of Cafe Paci for Australian Chef of the Year.
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