Regional Restaurant of the Year: Tedesca Osteria

Red Hill

Country restaurants come in many guises. But the long, languid lunch in a stylishly rustic room, overlooking a garden from which much of your meal has been harvested? That might be the greatest expression of the form. The multi-course, hours-long lunches served at Tedesca Osteria on the Mornington Peninsula have made a table here one of the most coveted bookings in the state, and it’s easy to see why.

Owners Brigitte Hafner and James Broadway have created a profoundly personal project, one imbued with their good taste and innate sense of hospitality, and they have inspired many in the industry to reach farther, to aim for authenticity over showmanship, to bring a deeper sense of place to their work.

Tedesca provides a Platonic ideal of the regional restaurant – something you might dream of finding on a luxurious European holiday – but somehow even more wondrous because it exists in our own backyard.