Life and business partners Alistair Blackwell and Karlee McGee have been making Tenterfield a more delicious town to eat and drink in for the past three years, whether you’re in the market for a quick salad sandwich (say, focaccia packed with gruyere, carrot, beetroot, pickled onion and crunchy cos) or a blow-out dinner with grower champagne.

Blackwell runs the front of house, stirring down choice Manhattans and turning up the volume on The Triffids and Go-Betweens, while McGee leads a small kitchen sending out dishes right at home in the soft-lit reddish-brick dining room.

Warm chevre tart underlined by soft onions, excellent pastry and jalapeno oil; potato gnocchi rich with local lamb ragu and a friendly wave of chilli; fat, sea-sweet pipis heightened by Cafe de Paris butter. Good times. The wine list is a cracker too, from local “Granite Belters” to hard-to-find natural producers out of France.

Good to know: Make a long weekend out of it and also book dinner at the wonderful Essen in Stanthorpe, Queensland, a 45-minute drive north.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.