TarraWarra

TarraWarra Estate Restaurant is the gastronomic dining room of TarraWarra Estate — a 1981-founded Yarra Valley winery, owned by the Besen family (Australian retail dynasty) — and is one of the most architecturally distinctive winery restaurants in Australia. The dining room sits in a converted contemporary winery pavilion designed by the Italian architect Allan Powell, with a 270-degree view of the TarraWarra vineyards and the surrounding Yarra Valley hills.

Chef Mark Ebbels crafts a seasonally evolving menu primarily sourced from TarraWarra's quarter-acre kitchen garden. Signatures rotate but typically include a hand-cut Yarra Valley salmon tartare; a slow-cooked Yarra Valley Wagyu shoulder; a hand-rolled tagliolino with Yarra Valley black truffle; a wood-fired Murray cod with samphire; the famous 'kitchen-garden vegetable course'.

The wine list runs to 350 references with deep TarraWarra Estate vertical coverage and a respectable comparative-Yarra Valley section. The pairing flight is the TarraWarra Estate vertical — four vintages across the day's flight.

The dining room and outdoor terrace together hold ninety-six covers; the outdoor terrace is the experience, with a 270-degree view of the TarraWarra vineyards.

TarraWarra Estate is the birthday-grade lunch in the Yarra Valley — the architecturally distinctive Allan-Powell-designed pavilion is the conversation, the kitchen-garden cooking is genuinely distinctive, and the four-course pairing format is the wine-country canon. Book the corner four-top on the western edge of the terrace.