The Age Good Food Guide
Simone's Restaurant Age Good Food Guide 16/20 Two Chefs Hats
ph: 03 5755 2266 www.simonesrestaurant.com.au
closed 4/9 - 24/10 for annual guided food tour of Italy
"Over several decades Patrizia and George Simone's cosy little restaurant - now happily ensconced in a warren of small rooms at a cottage in the centre of town - has become a place of pilgrimage for the sort of excellent, rustic Italian flavours that make the best of produce from this bounteous corner of Victoria"
Gourmet Traveller 2008 Australian Restaurant Guide "In a Victorian cottage in the Alpine township of Bright, you can bank on enjoying some of this country's finest Italian food"
Poplar's Restaurant Age Good Food Guide 14/20 page 216
ph: 03 5755 1655 www.poplars.com.au
closed Sundays and Mondays
Bright is famous for the autumnal turning of the elms, chestnuts, scarlet oak and poplars; while in France the poplar is also much loved for its linear strength in landscaping. No surprise, then, that tree-changing chef Patrick Heanue - a one-time Peter Rowland Catering executive - and partner Julia Wilson named their French bistro after this slender tree. They've been beavering away at this little pocket of Francophilia for a couple of years now. And while you are unlikely to be stunned by the menu of bistro favourites, the relaxed but smart dining room with its white-clothed tables, solid furniture and Art Deco-style pendant light clusters delivers a reassuring and reliable experience. Start with French onion soup, terrine or a charcuterie plate of local smallgoods, and move on to mains like coq au vin, duck confit and steak frites. For dessert there's a generously filled lemon tart and a creme brulee - of course - but really, the souffles are the thing. Depending on the season, flavour options will include orange and Grand Marnier; local berries; or chestnuts and praline. Especially decadent is a chocolate souffle, served with a liqueur chocolate ganache poured into the top.
Package available through abalina cottages $120 3 course meal for a couple or $150 3 course meal and a bottle of wine per couple. Add from "services" when you book online.
Villa Gusto Age Good Food Guide 2008 14.5/20
ph: 5756 2000 www.villagusto.com.au
open 7nights a week - bookings essential
"For some, the Italianate splendour of Villa Gusto might be taking things a tinkling Tuscan fountain too far; for others, this eccentric little establishment in the lee of Mount Buffalo blends good food and heightened atmosphere in just the right way"
The Range Restaurant, Myrtleford - The Age 2008 Good Food Guide Country Restaurant of the Year 16/20 2 chef's hats
03 5752 2885
rangerestaurant@yahoo.com.au
This regional beauty deserves its title of best country restaurant
The Age : Entertainment : Epicure : Restaurant Review
January 28, 2008 : Jane Faulkner
Luscious ripe berries and crisp apples from Stanley, sweet Rutherglen lamb, Mount Buffalo hazelnuts and Milawa free-range poultry. These are just some of the regional enticements at Range, a fine country restaurant that happens to be in north-east Victoria, in case you haven't heard. The snow road has never had it so good.
Plenty of ski-minded folk know Myrtleford because the Great Alpine Road cuts through the middle of it. But for the past two years, gastronomes and the hungry have sought it out for Michael Ryan's food. And since Range took out The Age Good Food Guide 2008's country restaurant of the year award late last year, there's been a mini-stampede around these parts.
North-east Victoria: Food and wine heaven ...
Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 at 10:52AM by Registered Commenter Campbell Mattinson
"I've had a couple of dining experiences of late that have really turned my head, so much so that I now suspect that north-east Victoria offers the best food-wine-travel experience of anywhere in regional Australia - it's why I moved here after all. Over the past 18 months things have gone up several notches, helped along by the fact that both the 2004 and 2005 vintages were outstanding in these parts, which means that the local wines are looking the best that they have ever looked. When you can pull Battely, Giaconda, Savaterre, Sorrenberg, Castagna, Warrabilla, Smiths, Pizzini, Brown Brothers, All Saints, Chambers, Morris and Baileys from a wine list either at, or pretty near to, their home towns, you're doing pretty well - and you can finish off your meal with a Rutherglen or Glenrowan muscat or tokay, also local.
But that's not the point of this plug ... it's actually about the food. I live five minutes from a highly-acclaimed restaurant named Simone's (ph: 03 5755 2266), which is in Bright, and even as a local and even on good terms with the owners, I find it hard to get a booking on a Saturday night. Twelve months ago I started saying that I thought Simone's had slipped a touch - but the last few times I've been there the food has been superb. It is not pretty food, nor is it minimalist food: it is regional Italian food in the finest style, andI love it for it. It's also a gorgeous restaurant to relax in - and, for $12 corkage, they allow BYO. It is my favourite restaurant in the world.
Bright though is just over three hours from the nearest capital city (Melbourne), or an hour from the nearest airport (Albury). Because it's in the heart of the Alps in winter there is snow, and in summer there is day after day of calm, windless sunshine ... but it's still a fair journey. You need more than one restaurant. This is where the boom comes in.
Poplars (ph: 03 5755 1655, www.poplars.com.au) is a restaurant that's been in Bright for over 15 years, and while it's seen some good days it's never remotely reached the heights that it now does - thanks to new owners Patrick Heanue and Julia Wilson. This is now a casual, relaxed, cosy French-bistro style eatery that impresses me more every time I visit it - it's actually my current haunt, and it accommodates BYO too ($5 corkage). The last time I visited I had a glorious pumpkin gnocchi followed by an equally glorious coq au vin followed by a creme brulee that had me scraping the last skerricks. The service, too, is spot on. That says it all but I'll also add this: one of my dining partners, a self-confessed foodie, said that his steak was "the best steak I have ever had". It did indeed look good, but I must add that by then he had had quite a few glasses of nebbiolo.
(I also once dined at Poplars with someone who is dramatically gluten intolerant (the finest speck of wheat added to the most delicate of sauces is enough to have her vomitting within 10 minutes), and the staff handled her requests with decisive confidence, always an excellent sign of a restaurant in complete control of what it's doing, and offering.)
Poplars is my current haunt because it's the complete package, but the new Range Restaurant on the Great Alpine Road at Myrtleford (ph: 03 5752 2885) is the food I really lust after - chef Michael Ryan is so talented and so distinctive that folks follow him wherever he goes. With good reason. The quality of his food is incredibly strong, across the board, though if you were to go and choose a selection of his entrees you couldn't help but be blown away. This is modern, fusion food for sure, but my view is that he understands the best of the region's local ingredients better than anyone.
Michael Ryan's partner, Jeannette Henderson (a trained and working winemaker) has also crafted an economical wine list of remarkable quality: I never have any problem finding something that I'm very keen to drink, and the price is always more-than-reasonable. (I recently enjoyed both a Teusner Joshua 2004 and a Laurent Les Becs Fin 2004, both of which are excellent red wines, at opposite ends of the style spectrum; the first bold and beautiful, the latter svelte and savoury.)
If you are in the area though, you really must visit Beechworth, and the reason you should is so that you can drop into Wardens Food and Wine (ph: 03 5728 1377, www.wardens.com.au). This is open all day. The coffee is excellent, the wine list is excellent, the service is excellent and the food lives up to everything that has preceded it. Wardens is something of a revelation - a recent lunch I enjoyed there was so outstanding that I'll shortly devote a separate article to it. If you are going anywhere near north-east Victoria, this place demands a detour.
Wardens is also the best place in the area to find a Giaconda or a Castagna or a Saveterre et al on the winelist - though keeping up with demand is not easy.
There are more. But these are the standouts. That the countryside surrounding them is spectacular is a mere added bonus - the food and wine is what counts. I recommend that you make the trip."
Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 at 10:52AM by Registered Commenter Campbell Mattinson