Changes in the kitchen bring new flavours and ideas to this charming, daytrip-friendly destination diner.
14.5/20
Contemporary$$
Ever wondered why – despite all the shared food culture connecting Australia and England – we use the term zucchini to describe summer squash while they call them courgettes?
As the etymology of each word suggests, this linguistic difference comes down to who brought the vegetable where. Zucchinis arrived here on the back of post-war Italian migration, while the Brits’ decision to run with courgette highlights the vital role France has had on shaping British food culture. (See also the bibliography of British food writing doyenne Elizabeth David; menus at royal banquets and high-end dining rooms traditionally being written in French; and the Norman origins of beef, pork, mutton and other English food words.)
I bring this up because, being summer and all, I’ve seen plenty of zucchini lately. I’ve seen it in friends’ gardens. I’ve seen it on special at the shops. And I’ve seen it on restaurant menus, including on Sunday’s three-course lunch menu at Millbrook: a postcard-perfect cellar door restaurant in Jarrahdale surrounded by national forest woodlands. What was notable about this particular zucchini sighting, however, was that the vegetable featured in every stage of the menu.
It started innocuously enough with diced zucchini: a seasonal green-and-gold accent for pot-sticker-style beef cheek dumplings that featured on the kitchen’s choice selection of shared entrees that every table gets. (The dumplings, unfortunately, were a little drier than the specimens one would expect to find at any self-respecting dim sum joint.)
The main course, however, saw the vegetable go from walk-on extra to co-headliner alongside fillets of juicy breaksea and rankin cod. “All things zucchini” materialised as thin discs cloaked in batter and fried into crunchy chips that evoked memories of Indonesian pisang goreng; gently braised arcs of fresh and fermented zuke; plus a slash of cream flavoured with the kitchen’s zucchini trim. A cool, resourceful exploration of the vegetable’s versatility and potential beyond the ubiquitous (albeit delicious) zucchini slice.
Equally clever was the way zucchini was utilised in dessert with the prolific, heavily cropping vegetable being combined with white chocolate to make a ganache for semi-freddo as well as slowly reduced into a plant-based caramel that the lush, half-frozen dessert was arranged on. If you’ve spent time dining at wineries, you’ll know that composed, cheffy dishes like these are par-for-course. What sets Millbrook apart from its contemporaries is that most of its fruit and vegetables are grown on-site.
This grow-it-yourself approach started in 2010 with the appointment of head Guy Jeffreys, who established a kitchen garden to go with the property’s (then) 80-year-old orchards. While the garden is still going strong, Jeffreys has since moved into to an ambassador role with the kitchen’s day-to-day now falling on the shoulders of head chef Gino Pannunzio. Hailing from the hillside city of Marino Italy’s Lazio region, Pannunzio cooked in flashy hotels and restaurants across Rome before heading to Australia chasing a change of scenario.
But like the saying goes, while you can take the boy out of Italy, getting Italy out of the boy is a little harder, especially in a kitchen. And while the food during Millbrook’s Jeffreys era has always featured an Italian-ish agrarian bent, Pannunzio – the first Italian head chef in recent Millbrook history – appears to be cooking with a much stronger accent.
The rich, slow-moving polenta served with unctuous roast pork belly still uses jewel-like mountain corn grown onsite but boasts more butter and Parmesan cheese than previous iterations. Whereas Millbrook’s house-baked bread was once a shining example of the airy, tangy sourdough paradigm, Sunday’s bread felt denser, crustier and closer to the pane di casa style. Despite the shift in style, both were, crucially, still good eating.
The menu also features more Japanese flourishes than previously: a sign, I’d wager, of Pannunzio’s time at the Roman outpost of global Japanese dining powerhouse, Zuma. Char-grilled tomatoes are spiked with a miso-based dressing and crunched up with toasted black and white sesame seeds. Strips of toothsome, wonderfully chewy dhufish are dressed with soy sauce and a lurid green shiso leaf oil: the result is a raw fish that’s as much sushi as it is crudo.
Yet for all the changes happening in the kitchen, many forward-facing facets of the Millbrook experience remain unchanged. The menu structure – two-courses with a choice of main is $75; dessert is an extra $15 – still represents good value. Cellar door pricing on estate wines and other bottles from the growing Fogarty Wine Group family (FWG own Millbrook) are another win for end users.
The second-storey dining room of stone and wood continues to exude country-casual warmth without succumbing to any lazy McLeod’s Daughters-esque set-dressing. The result is a destination that still feels open to all with weekend lunches rating high on vibe and volume. You’ll hear the din of the restaurant as you ascend the stairs from the tasting room. Tables wave cheerily to guests departing via helicopter. Big, multi-generational parties give full voice to renditions of “Happy Birthday”. (The more experienced members of the floor team, pleasingly, have the nous to know which tables would prefer a more subdued, less vocal birthday celebration.)
True, Millbrook is an ideal place to mark life’s milestones, yet any outing to this daytrip-friendly destination diner feels like cause to celebrate. Is it time you (re)paid Jarrahdale a visit?
The low-down
Vibe: a destination cellar door restaurant in the Perth Hills worth planning a daytrip around.
Go-to dish: poverello beans, polenta and roast pork.
Drinks: Estate wines and other wines from within the group, all offered at attractive cellar door prices.
Cost: about $150 for two, excluding drinks.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
