Camel rides, views, unpretentious food … there are multiple reasons to point yourself towards La Vetta, a winery restaurant on the city’s northern fringe.
15/20
Italian$$$
I’m at a winery restaurant 15 minutes north of Melbourne Airport and a camel is watching me have lunch. The air is scented with woodsmoke and the sounds are happy ones: glasses clinking, laughter tinkling. I have a glass of zippy sparkling wine and the 1pm Airbus to Singapore pushes past painterly clouds.
We’re at La Vetta, the hilltop, 110-seat restaurant at Marnong Estate, a 485-hectare cattle farm and visitor destination on Melbourne’s northern fringe.
Lunch is a delight, an accomplished meal overseen by chef Greg Feck, who’s been cooking Italian food in Melbourne for 30 years. As good as it is, I’m not sure my next trip here will be to the restaurant.
Maybe I’ll return for the monthly petting zoo, where that camel and her friends are saddled up for rides and there’s hand-feeding of emus, goats and bunnies.
Perhaps I’ll be invited to a wedding in the woolshed or I’ll find a designated driver to chauffeur me to the cellar door for wine tasting followed by a cheese platter on the lawn.
I might book into one of the swish cabins with views to the Macedon Ranges, or sink into a suite in the original bluestone homestead, parts of which date back to the 1840s.
I could bring the kids to the kiosk for panini or invite the grandparents to the casual, all-day Cucina 3064 for pizza and parma.
There are multiple reasons to point yourself towards one of the most surprising destinations in Melbourne.
Marnong Estate owner Dino Strano founded Winslow, a large construction company. He’s always lived in the northern suburbs and bought this property in 2016 as a hobby farm. “The day after, I looked at the view and said, ‘We have to share it,’ ” he tells me.
Strano also has ambitious plans for a hotel on the property; he credits his southern Italian heritage with a desire to welcome visitors but says it’s a tough game: “Hospitality does your head in; construction’s easy by comparison.”
“I looked at the view and said, ‘We have to share it’.”
Dino Strano, Marnong Estate owner
La Vetta’s elevated dining room has expansive views and the waiting staff are well-schooled and seem genuinely proud of their work.
Chef Feck is a New Zealander who fed Melbourne at Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder, St Kilda fine diner Sapore and two Hawthorn places, cosy cafe Crabapple Kitchen and Vaporetto, a Venetian bar. His partner, Kim Coronica, has recently taken on the general manager’s role here. The couple’s other businesses were small and self-contained, nothing like this multi-outlet juggernaut, but it feels good here – energised, organised and buzzing.
The food is unpretentious, leaning hard into steak and pasta, with most dishes touched by a wood grill or domed wood-fired oven, which brings rustic honesty to the food.
Mortadella is scrunched onto skewers ($13) and cooked over charcoal so nubbins of fat melt over the meat, waking up white pepper notes.
Quail ($27) is gleaming and juicy over a braise of lentils, duck salami and chestnut cream that’s anchored by blistered red grapes, candied mustard fruit and crisp sage. The flavours are bold but deftly balanced, leaning more into autumn than spring, but I guess the leaves are falling in the Po Valley.
Pasta is extruded in-house: paccheri are fat tubes, lolling lazily and lavished with a buttery bisque made from the shells of the Moreton Bay bugs whose meat dots the dish ($48). I know I should love the luxurious shellfish most, but it’s the pasta that seduces me, properly al dente and grooved so it holds garlic, chilli and parsley.
There’s confidence in simplicity: wagyu flank steak ($80) is cooked as requested and seasoned well, like all the food here.
Are carrots the vegetable we most take for granted? Here, they’re turned into heroes, blistered in the wood oven, tossed with seeds and drizzled with herb oil ($16), which adds fragrant freshness to their sweet heft.
There’s a large Muslim population in the northern suburbs, so Feck ensures most of the meat dishes are halal and amends some traditional Italian recipes to suit, cooking ragu without wine, for example. Inclusivity is nice, but it’s also propitious for business and the crowd at La Vetta represents the neighbourhood.
Some classics can’t be hauled too far from their heritage, though. The tiramisu ($20) is boozy and rich, made with eggs from the estate’s chickens. It’s scooped from a large bowl at the table as the 4.20pm from Coolangatta begins its final descent and my camel turns away with a humpy harrumph.
The low-down
Vibe: Surprising suburban daytrip
Go-to dish: Wagyu flank steak ($80)
Drinks: Estate-grown wine is the way to go and Italian varietals, including pinot grigio, fiano and montepulciano, work well with the menu.
Cost: About $250 for two, excluding drinks
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
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