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.