He did it first at the Royal Mail Hotel, putting Dunkeld in the Grampians on the map. Now Dan Hunter has done the same for Birregurra in the Otway hinterland. The food-obessessed are still making their pilgrimage to worship at his shrine to all that is seasonal, though their trip now only takes little over 90 minutes from the city.

Hunter took over what was George Biron’s Sunnybrae two years ago, and his makeover of the farmhouse provides a sublimely simple, expensively elegant canvas in which to submit to a procession of plates and tastes that tops three hours yet never feels laboured and is studded with very many highs.

It starts with a selection of ‘snacks’; one- or two-bite bits, the delicate presentation of each belying powerful flavours. A single Otway shiitake brightened with miso, perhaps, or a sublime piece of hapuka served in a puffed shell of crisp skin that packs a sea salt punch. An “iced” oyster, is a revelation – memories of childhood summers given a very adult reimagining – and a highlight in a meal of many, where even the bread and “wet churned” butter is the genre redefining stuff of dreams. As is the wonderful wine list which eschews four-figure trophy wines in favour of the local and interesting with lots to choose from at the $60-$70 a bottle mark, admirable for a restaurant at this echelon, with its ambitions. Because a meal here is undoubtedly an investment – the set menu will set you back $180 a head; $300 with matched wines – but when dish after dish is searingly memorable, gorgeous to look at but more glorious to eat, the value proposition becomes clearer. Brae is one of the best restaurants in Australia that’s increasingly at home on the world stage and deserves to be on every eater’s bucket list. It’s only getting better.

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