This exciting spot has turned good NSW country getaways into great ones

Previous SlideNext Slide

Things I like about Tenterfield:

1. The cardinal-red serviettes popping against blue-green vinyl chairs at Sing Wah Chinese Restaurant.
2. Premier Meats butcher shop – the “gourmet sausage king” – advertises “TenDerfield Beef” in its window.
3. Not to be outdone, the tagline for Matador Meats on the main street is “We sell no bull”.
4. The keyrings at the Peter Allen Motor Inn say Peter “Allan” and seemingly have for years.
5. Stonefruit.

Before Stonefruit opened, you could still make a perfectly nice weekend out of a trip to Tenterfield, particularly if you were into anthems about chatty old saddlers and bull-free snags. But Stonefruit has been turning nice New England getaways into great ones for the past three years, whether you’re in the market for a quick salad sandwich (specifically, a $15 focaccia packed with gruyere, carrot, beetroot, pickled onion, sprouts and crunchy cos) or a blow-out dinner with French fizz (Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Extra Brut, $440 per bottle).

Life and business partners Alistair Blackwell and Karlee McGee left inner-city Sydney to fill a food and booze gap in Tenterfield with Stonefruit, which functions as a cafe, restaurant, bar and takeaway wine shop. Blackwell runs the front of house, stirring down choice Manhattans, turning up the volume on The Triffids and Go-Betweens, and explaining that “Paul and Sue’s” tartare is from a cow that lived the good life grazing in nearby Eukey.

Canadian-born McGee leads a small kitchen, grating a snowfall of pecorino over that raw beef, and plating dishes that could be from a Melbourne, Toronto or London wine bar but feel most at home here, served in a soft-lit, reddish-brick dining room or under vines in the leafiest of courtyards.

The other week, on a book research trip to document Australian-Chinese restaurants of the Northern Tablelands, I spent a solo lunch and dinner at Stonefruit and would have returned if it weren’t for the eight-hour drive home. A slice of warm, just-set chevre tart may have been the highlight, underlined by soft onions, excellent pastry and jalapeno oil. Potato gnocchi was on hand to match any “Granite Belter” tempranillo, rich with local lamb ragu and a friendly wave of chilli.

McGee is also keen to show that seafood in the country can be delicious. Crudo of pink snapper from Yamba, a three-hour drive east, is prettily plated with pickled red-globe radish, eschalot, blood orange and house chilli oil. South Ballina pipis are sea-sweet and fat in a sort-of bisque heightened by Cafe de Paris butter, while thick ribbons of Mooloolaba cuttlefish come with a wedge of polenta, rainbow chard and chorizo in paprika-red broth. It tastes like an afternoon in Galicia and the drinks list features some lightweight Spanish reds if you want to lean into the theme.

But you really want to get across the local stuff, too. Blackwell pours a beaut range of bottles from New England and Granite Belt winemakers, such as Knucklehead, Jilly and La Petite Mort, and these are showcased next to a ripper line-up of Old World producers that make natural wine nerds sweaty. Ganevat? Robinot? Frédéric Cossard? In Tenterfield? Believe it.

Like so many wine bars around the state (see also Merimbula’s Bar Superette and Hey Rosey in Orange), Stonefruit makes me immediately want to open my own version. But that’s ignoring the huge amount of work that goes into creating a place like this. I doubt I have the tenacity, but I’m thrilled that more and more regional operators in NSW do.

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

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine