You’d better stay over. Because there’s a native pepperberry Mary cocktail involving bush tomato and pimento, a smoked apple sour made from local apples, a “tart roses” brew with house-grown rose soaked gin, and when you’re curled up by the fire on any kind of day you’re going to wish you’d booked into one of Biota’s own rooms for the night.

Biota is known as a two-hatted fine diner headed up by chef James Viles, but this regional treasure has an entire wing dedicated to being the best café, lunch stop, spot for botanical-infused cocktails in the Southern Highlands. And it is. The room is as elegant as its dressed-up brother, but there are Scandi-style sofas, a long concrete bar that inspires kitchen renovation fantasies, and a floor you’re going to want to borrow for better Instagram shots (yes, I shot my plate of food on the floor; insert embarrassed emoji here).

But the food. Soft buns are filled with creamed egg and picked crab, there’s a pork hock toastie, and fried school prawns are definitely to be matched with the earl grey gin and tonic with botanicals, never mind that it’s still breakfast. There are morning-appropriate cocktails as well, including a Patron café, espresso and honey tipple that kept us going until midday snacks of hot fried chicken tenders. Traipse around the Biota garden chatting to the restaurant’s own hens, discover what broad bean plants look like, borrow a strawberry from the bush (sorry James). Then, turn in for five courses at the fine diner that night. You’ll definitely need to book that room.
Tel: 02 4862 2005

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