A visit to Hogget Kitchen isn’t so much a meal as a journey into the heart of Gippsland. The dining room offers two compelling views: a sweep of vines and a distant dam, or the open kitchen where chefs treat local produce with reverential simplicity.

Wherever you’re seated, you’ll be treated to a delicious immersion in the rhythms of the countryside. The menu, a four- or six-course narrative about what’s good right now, begins with a flurry of snacks. In winter, this might include an elegant take on mushrooms on toast with shaved truffles, oxtail croquettes sporting dill pickle berets, and delicate one-bite pastries cradling leek and labne.

You may want extra bread or a spoon for the lip-coating chicken jus surrounding golden Jerusalem artichoke ravioli. But return a week later and the dishes you loved will have been replaced by new ones in an ever-changing distillation of the season.

Good to know: The kitchen pickles, smokes, bottles and butchers almost everything on the plate.

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