Barragunda Dining - Morning Peninsula Barragunda Dining - Morning Peninsula

The farm-to-table restaurant from Simone Watts is located at Cape Schanck.

The 40-person restaurant, with its glasshouse dining room, is on a regenerative farm and market garden on the 1000-acre Barragunda Estate, on the southernmost tip of the Mornington Peninsula.

Guests arrive along a 1.5km track winding through tea trees, coast wirilda, sheoaks, and moonah. Nestled on the northern side of the 1000-acre estate the restaurant sits overlooking the market garden. Its glass pavilion emerges from the heritage farm shed, thoughtfully reimagined by David Dubois Architecture into a serene space surrounded by nature in all its splendour.

Menu

Barragunda Dining's farm-to-table offering is a set 4-course menu showcasing the seasonal beauty of time and place. The menu is $145 per person with some courses being served shared and others individual.

Our menu celebrates fresh, organic produce grown from the Estate's garden, evolving along with the seasons and the farm's natural produce cycles. Our guests are served a share-style vegetable-forward menu complemented by Estate-reared hogget and Black Angus beef, and seafood from Wildlife Fisheries.

Our pastry and bar menu showcases produce from the 800 mature trees in the orchard including apples, pears, quince, peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots, figs, alongside citrus, olives and avocados.

Restaurant Opening Hours
Friday 12-5 pm
Saturday 12-5 pm, 6:30-10 pm
Sunday 12-5 pm
Monday 12-5 pm
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday Closed
Thursday Closed

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ABOUT BARRAGUNDA ESTATE

Positioned on the rugged eastern tip of Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, Barragunda Estate features 1,000 acres of sprawling native bushland stretching from Green's Bush to Bushranger's Bay and the towering cliffs of Cape Schanck.

With its location on the lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, Barragunda's name is said to be an ode to the thunderous roar of the sea along the cliff-edged coastline.

The estate is owned by the Morris family, owners of Morris Group: an independent, family run business operating a collection of iconic Australian experiences

The Morris family's philanthropic trust, Morris Family Foundation supports grassroots environmental and social projects across Australia and internationally. The foundation is run by Executive Director Hayley Morris, a passionate food system advocate who's committed to supporting initiatives that advance Australia's transition to regenerative agriculture.

With her successful career in business, environmentalism and philanthropy, Hayley's long-held ambition to operate a regenerative farm and restaurant on the estate will be realised in February 2025 with the opening of Barragunda Dining.

All profits from the restaurant will be directed back to the foundation to support innovation and systemic change in Australia's food systems and advance the shift towards regenerative practices.

Barragunda, said to mean 'thunderous roar of the sea'.

broadsheet.com.au says

After a Four-Year Wait, Barragunda Dining on the Morning Peninsula Finally Opens

The farm-to-table restaurant from Simone Watts is about "reconnecting the local community to their food". The opening menu features dried heirloom tomato with house-made smoked stracciatella and tomato leaf oil, as well as an orange blossom honey dessert that pays tribute to Watts's late mentor, Greg Malouf.

Chef Simone Watts and Hayley Morris have been readying regional farm-to-table restaurant Barragunda Dining for four years. Tomorrow, it finally opens to the public.

"Hayley and I are just sort of pinching ourselves, floating around the whole time, going, 'Is this even real?' And I feel like it every time I walk into the space," Watts, a former head chef at Coda, tells Broadsheet.

Watts lists Dan Barber's New York State restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns as a key inspiration, as well as regional Victorian restaurants such as the Hot-Listed Tedesca Osteria and Brae, Wickens at Royal Mail Hotel, and O.My.

"On a regional level, farm-to-table is becoming more the norm, which is really exciting. It's not token-gesture kitchen gardens anymore." What Watts relies on at Barragunda is anything but token. The 40-person restaurant, with its glasshouse dining room, is on a regenerative farm and market garden on the 1000-acre Barragunda Estate, on the southernmost tip of the Mornington Peninsula.

The menu will be constantly evolving, Watts tells Broadsheet. "The main thing about being able to work in a farm to table restaurant is the ability to flip and rotate and adapt - I had eggplant on the opening menu and they're not quite ready, so we flipped it, and we've put a new season allium dish on instead with all of the beautiful onions that are coming through."

Morris tells Broadsheet, a highlight of the opening menu is the dried heirloom tomato with smoked stracciatella and tomato leaf oil. The chefs take the skins off the tomatoes and lightly cure them in salt overnight. They then dry them for six to eight hours to get rid of the moisture and concentrate the flavour. Juice that drips out of the tomato during the process is reduced and used to glaze the dried tomato. "It gets this sexy, unctuous dressing of itself," says Watts. It's served on a bed of smoked house-made creme fraiche that has shredded house-made mozzarella folded through it, and is finished with tomato leaf oil.

Another standout is a dish that uses Harry's mussels served with fennel à la Grecque. Fermented baby fennel is cooked down with white wine, coriander, black pepper and fennel seeds. The simply cooked mussels and fennel are served with what Watts describes as "super-crunchy and umami" sunflower cream made using the whole sunflower, including marrow from the stalk, the seeds and a miso made from last year's seeds and marrow.

But when asked what she's most excited for people to try, the dish that first comes to mind is an ode to her late mentor, the pioneering chef Greg Malouf, made with Barragunda's pastry chef Laura Skvor, who also overseas the restaurant's bread program. The dessert highlights orange blossom honey from the farm, infused with semolina and cardamom. It accompanies apricot crème fraîche ice-cream, and a compote of peaches finished in a peach pit vinegar dressing that's bruleed with semolina.

"Cardamom and orange blossom sing Greg's name to me. Greg would always come alive with anything orange blossom," Watts says.

The restaurant is owned by the Morris Family Foundation, with all profits from the $145 set menu going back into the foundation's work to improve food systems work. And Morris, who has been involved with the restaurant since its inception, says the opening is a career highlight. For Watts, the opening represents a bond with the local landscape and people.

"It's about connection to place and reconnecting the local community to their food," she says. "Showing them how it's grown, but also getting them to celebrate how beautiful the Mornington Peninsula is and just how fortunate we are to live here."

Published on 20 February 2025
by Audrey Payne | broadsheet.com.au

❊ Address ❊

 ⊜  113 Cape Schanck Road,  Cape Schanck  View Map
 ✆ Telephone: 8644 4050

→ www.barragunda.com.au

We acknowledge the traditional owners, the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.



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