Visit: Brae Restaurant

\ˈbrā\ n. A hillside; a gentle slope

IMAGES: Colin Page, Trevor Mien and Kristoffer Paulsen

Well worth a visit is the destination restaurant, Brae, the brainchild of Australian chef extraordinaire, Dan Hunter. Set on a hillside in Birregurra, Victoria, Australia, Brae is a contemporary restaurant and guest suites on a working organic farm – a place to be immersed in nature and eat from the land.

On opening Brae in 2013, chef and owner Dan Hunter realised his vision of a restaurant as an authentic reflection of his values and ambition – a place where he is committed to a sustainable method of farming, cooking and hospitality. Here, he and his team grow organic food and use only ethically grown produce from Brae Farm, the surrounding land and local farmers to offer a unique Australian cuisine built around an immense respect for nature, place and seasonality.

Brae is recognised as one of Australia’s and the world’s best restaurants. Brae was named the Good Food Guide’s 2020 Australian Restaurant of the Year and Australian Gourmet Traveller’s 2020 Regional Restaurant of the Year. The restaurant reached number 44 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017 and is currently ranked at number 57 on the 2021 list.

Brae’s dining room and guest suites, both designed by Six Degrees Architects, reference the handcrafted ethos of the restaurant menu. Custom-made steel, brass and timber features, unique Australian artworks, artisanal glassware and bespoke crockery – some utilising clay from Brae’s dams and ash from the restaurant’s wood fires – create a handcrafted space reflecting Brae’s natural surround.

Organic principles and regenerative farming techniques are employed at Brae Farm to produce seasonal vegetables, orchard fruits, citrus, nuts, berries, honey and grain crops for use in the restaurant. Olives are pressed for olive oil and Brae Farm’s own organic wheat grain is milled on site daily for bread and has been used to produce ‘Liquid Asset’, an organic wheat beer brewed in collaboration with Prickly Moses Brewery. The property and its food production are designed for guests to explore, with walking paths and signage helping reconnect visitors to their food and the place it comes from.

If you want to make a weekend of it, Brae offer six spacious, eco-friendly guest suites. The suites feature slate floors with underfloor hydronic heating, marble bench tops, brass fittings, recycled bricks, Australian black-butt timber panelling, solar energy, harvested rainwater and an eco-friendly worm farm biological waste treatment system, resulting in a building with zero net emissions.

Guests are supplied with gumboots and umbrellas for a morning stroll through Brae Farm. An 11am check out allows for a leisurely in-room breakfast of organic, wood-fired sourdough bread, freshly baked pastries, Brae Farm honey, jams, and preserves, St Ali coffee, Schulz Organic Dairy milk, freshly squeezed juice and seasonal produce harvested from the property and nearby. A stay too good to pass up.