Rich with beautiful dish pictures promoting local produce, stories of creative uses of food waste and hashtags such as #ifitsnotfromhereitsnotfromhere, chef Simon Furley’s insta account gives some clue to what to expect at The Paddock.

The restaurant is within Beechmont Estate, a working cattle farm, polo club and luxury retreat in the Gold Coast hinterland, just over an hour from Broadbeach and about an hour and half from Brisbane.

Formerly Hazelwood Estate, the property was recently acquired by the Northern Escape Collection, which owns Orpheus Island Lodge, Mount Mulligan Lodge and Daintree Ecolodge, however, the restaurant is also open to external guests.

With soaring barn-like ceilings, bespoke furniture by local makers, polo paraphernalia and arty prints of horses, Paddock evokes a sense of place without being too self-consciously “country,” or tipping into tweeness.

The large dining space has a curved bar and couches set before the fireplace, floor-to-ceiling glass with views over the McPherson Ranges and a breezy terrace overlooking a kitchen garden planted with native edibles.

The food is hyper-local, seasonal and the kitchen has an immutable philosophy of zero-waste.

A case in point is a dish of sustainable Rocky Point grouper, “soused” with vinegar, alpine pepper and lemon myrtle to “cook” it, then warmed in locally farmed crayfish shell oil. It comes served in a pool of fish-frame consomme, with a house-made XO sauce created from the roasted bones and heads of the crayfish, gently spiced with local turmeric and pepper.

The fish’s skin has been removed, slowly dried and smoked over an open flame, then fried to prawn-cracker crispness, while a bespoke pottery bowl holds a rich pate made from the liver, looking like some kind of exotic coral or sea anemone.

The frequently changing, availability-adapting tasting menu is a roll-call of local producers, with Furley and his team having access to enviably rich pickings in this fertile region.

Scenic Rim mushrooms, pink, king and oyster, are grilled over firewood, glazed with fermented honey with a button mushroom sauce, and a stem ketchup and seasoned with an uber-umami powder made from the dehydrated mushroom trimmings.

A dish of Towri Sheep Cheese hogget, (they get the older lamb in whole and use all of it) comes as a piece of a dry-aged loin and shoulder minced with alpine and long pepper, Kalbar carrots cooked in whey and slicked with sunflower tahini and a fermented carrot sauce. It’s topped with a drift of a locally made, triple milk cheese, made from camel milk, goat and sheep milk – a world first and more expensive even than truffle.

A palate-cleansing cube of citronella geranium jelly is complex and tangy. Made from kitchen garden geranium leaves, it’s rolled in dried apple skin powder, and tastes like a grown-up lolly.

Sweets include a layer of translucent, compressed melon draped over house-made mascarpone, and lemon sorbet, zingy with lime verbena oil, and a playful Toowoomba-made Metiisto bean-to-bar chocolate dessert, shaped like pinecones, infused with oil made with cypresss pine roots.

With the “use it all” philosophy and incorporation of often unusual botanicals, some of the dishes’ flavours are likely to be unfamiliar and make wine matching a challenge, so if you’ve a designated driver (or are staying the night) lean on sommelier Louis Buchan for advice.

Things are only likely to get more interesting as Furley instigates a fossil fuel ban in the kitchen, in line with the property’s sustainable ethos, restricting cooking to solar powered electric and wood.

This is creative, clever, ego-less cooking; a respectful homage to both the local nature-provided bounty and the people who grow, nurture or transform it. Stripping it back though, it’s just really good food that’s a pleasure to eat.

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