Emerald City

Emerald City is the hidden 4-seat chef's-table dining room of chef Joel Alderdice, opened in early 2024 behind a velvet curtain at the back of Healesville's Cavanagh's Whisky and Alehouse, on the Maroondah Highway in the Healesville town centre, and is the most architecturally distinctive contemporary chef's-table experience in the Yarra Valley. The space holds exactly four diners at a single curved counter facing the open kitchen.

Alderdice runs the omakase format, twelve to sixteen courses depending on the day, served continuously over four hours. Signatures rotate weekly but typically include tempura veggies; hibachi-grilled meats; rainbow trout; a hand-rolled tagliolino with Yarra Valley black truffle; a Yarra Valley Wagyu robatayaki course; the famous 'native-honey ice-cream' for the dessert course.

The wine programme runs through the Cavanagh's whisky-bar cellar, a respectable Australian-whisky and Yarra Valley wine list, with a serious sake programme that runs to twenty-plus daiginjo bottlings.

The 4-seat counter format is the experience, total privacy, a constant chef-diner conversation, and a kitchen pacing that runs unhurried for over four hours. Alderdice himself runs the kitchen alone on most evenings.

Emerald City is the proposal-grade table in the Yarra Valley, the 4-seat hidden setting means total privacy, the omakase format is the closest the region comes to a chef's-table experience, and the four-hour pacing accommodates a slow-moving evening.