Destination Dining: The Bunyip Hotel, Cavendish
Destination dining has been a long established part of the Australian food scene. The Lake House in Daylesford was amongst the first to entice city slickers out to the sticks for a good feed over thirty years ago. Living in Port Fairy, the Royal Mail in Dunkeld has been a close option for us for many years and Fen was just around the corner until it closed in January. But it’s a risky proposition. Generally speaking, to establish a successful business in a small, rural community, you need significant local support. From suppliers, to staff, to consumers. By the looks of their Facebook Page, the new proprietors of The Bunyip Hotel in Cavendish have been making sure of that! They’ve used local tradespeople to give the pub an updated look, they have sourced beautiful local timbers for new outdoor tables and chairs, their wine list is exclusively local and their spuds are from Koroit!
Cavendish is a town of approximately 500 people, situated on the Wannon River at the southern edge of the Grampians National Park, about 30 minutes north of Hamilton. Not where you’d expect to be eating refined classic pub fare such as Portland rockling and Koroit chips alongside wagyu pastrami served with house made kimchi! I had started to hear rumblings around town that this place was worth the drive. In true country town style, pieces started to fall into place that the chef Jimmy Campbell was not only the ex head chef of two hatted Movida in Sydney, but was a local boy who had come home. A Good Food article then let me know he had been cooking at the pub since early 2017, before taking over the lease early 2018 from the Bunyip Brewery who moved to new premises nearby.
My fellow food lovers, Emma and Daniel, came for the drive and we made a weekend of it doing a big loop around to the wineries in the Grampians. But first, lunch on Saturday at The Bunyip Hotel! I have never been there before, so can’t comment on how much work has been done, but it’s clear that there have been some updates made – a new bar, walls painted, some gorgeous artwork etc, but the overall feel of the room is still accessible, country pub chic, with formica topped tables and old school black vinyl padded chairs. Lots of light streams through the huge windows looking out over the deck and onto the beautiful red gums lining the Wannon River. We are coming back for a long, slow Sunday afternoon at the outdoor tables for sure and hopefully something will be slow roasting in that massive outdoor pizza oven!
The wine list was super tight and super local; only one page and the only interlopers were a couple of French sparklings. We happily tried a quite unusual 2015 Hochkirch Riesling that looked, smelled and tasted a lot older than it was. Not a summer drinking session riesling, but it definitely came into its own with the food. If you’re just after a few beers and a bowl of chips, there was Carlton, Great Northern and a craft beer and cider on tap. It was great to see some local farmers come into the front bar around 2:30pm for pots. It’s still a pub you can call into in your work gear for a beer which is pretty important given where it is!
As often happens, we got a bit carried away with the ordering and didn’t account for the extraordinarily generous portion sizes. We definitely got the picture from our waitress’ somewhat amused face as she started to put the entrees down in front of us! The share plates and entrees menu pushed the traditional pub fare boundaries, with pastrami and kimchi, croquettes, black pudding and fresh Portland Bugs among the options the day we visited. The menu changes regularly depending on the produce available.
Our tomato salad with a mix of home grown heirlooms, red onion, basil and Shaw River mozarella made it clear the kitchen garden is under the control of someone who knows what they are doing. The tomatoes were gorgeous bursts of sweetness, the best I’ve had since I was in Greece last summer and that’s saying something! The slab of duck terrine was terrine for people who don’t like terrine – like me! Chunky bits of meat overcame any of my usual texture issues and the sourdough and pickles it came with were perfect accompaniments. There was no way we were passing up the bowl of hand cut Koroit potato spuds served with fried Caravan eggs and dusted with paprika. They were tasty, tasty chips!
Daniel had wisely ordered his much anticipated house made Black Pudding with roasted beetroot (listed as an entree) for his main course. Emma and I were far greedier. Our waitress placed the Pork Parma with tomato sauce, pumpkin and salad in front of Emma and the David Blackmore Wagyu Beef Neck Hot Pot in front of me, with a slightly evil grin. Under Daniel’s relentless bullying, we were instructed to eat every, last bit. We did. But it was a herculean effort!
Daniel and his housemate went through an offal stage. They would head to their local butcher on a Saturday morning to buy all the ingredients to make haggis or black pudding and report back on their efforts. It’s fair to say he has a better appreciation than most, certainly more so than me and Emma, of the intricacies of black pudding and he is a pretty harsh critic. This Black Pudding was pronounced the best thing he had eaten in a very, very long time. The Pork Parma was a lovely piece of pork, covered in lightly fried, crispy panko crumbs and a tomato sauce. We had forgotten about the cheese part of the Parma until Emma cut into the middle of the pork to find it was stuffed with ham and oozing cheese. The simple salad of cos leaves and red onion that it was served with was great to cut through the richness of the dish. My Hot Pot came deconstructed, with the most tender, rich Wagyu Beef Neck that was perfectly charred on the outside, pulling away to creamy textured meat inside. There were two very generous pieces of meat, served with roasted carrot, mashed potato and roasted potato, all swimming in a sweet, rich but surprisingly light jus that I think had some sort of sherry in it, maybe Pedro Ximinez given the Spanish influences? Whatever it was, the leftover sourdough from the terrine was put to good use by everyone at the table! I ordered it despite the hot weather the day we visited, but I will be having it again in the middle of winter with a big glass of red.
I wanted all the desserts, but frankly it was a miracle I could drag myself from the table to the car after the volume of food we had already consumed. Leaving behind the lemon tart, golden syrup dumplings and house made ice-cream still makes me a little regretful as I type this nearly a week later, but I just couldn’t do it! Next time I will have a game plan that is likely to involve a whole afternoon time frame!
Upon finding out we were from Port Fairy, one of the new owners, Matt, informed us they were looking at doing some pop ups here over next summer which is something to look forward to! In the meantime, get yourselves to Cavendish before everyone else finds out about it! It’s certainly worth the drive. I’m looking forward to a Chef’s Table Sunday lunch very soon.
PS. For those of you who have been following along with Gourmet Roaming, apologies it’s been a while between posts. I’ve been heavily in the rehab, rest, repeat cycle with not a lot of energy for much else! The healing process is going along very slowly, but I’m mainly without crutches now and I see small improvements each week. I can’t walk very far or with any pace and my patience is certainly being tested, but on the plus side I’m still very good at eating excellent food and drinking great wine 🙂
