Castlemaine’s 16-seat country restaurant Bar Midland serves food and drink strictly from within state lines.
Contemporary$$
We know everything is connected but it’s still a surprise to learn that the venison bones that are by-products of a dish at Bar Midland are crushed into clay that’s turned into plates for future meals. The bottle that your wine is being poured from may also be pulverised to form a ceramic glaze. Those Jerusalem artichoke chips you’re munching? The oil they’re fried in becomes biodiesel to heat a greenhouse that nurtures chillies.
The more you learn about this 16-seat country restaurant, which serves food and drink only from Victoria, the more you get excited about its strictly local, strikingly sustainable ethics.
Owners Loudon Cooper (front of house, ceramicist) and Alexander Marano (chef, gardener) find the fun and satisfaction within the strict limits they’ve set for themselves. Though the dining experience is tied to a worthy narrative, there is no hint of preaching. On the other hand, if you want a conversation about compost or dairy farming issues, they’ll meet you halfway.
Bar Midland has just celebrated its fourth birthday and there’s a confidence that comes with relative longevity: ideas have been tested, systems trammelled, messages honed.
In no small part, it’s Victoria’s aperitivo-makers that have made Midland possible.
Ten years ago, when Cooper and Marano connected at the latter’s previous restaurant, The Good Table, they couldn’t have built a comprehensive drinks list solely sourced statewide. But now, with small producers such as Maidenii, Saison Aperitifs, Marionette and Beechworth Bitters Company, it’s easy to mix a negroni or spritz of quality and character.
You could celebrate with one, especially if you’ve taken the sensible option and caught the train from Melbourne: the station is across the road from the handsome Midland Hotel, which has accommodation upstairs. People often assume the 1879 building was a pub but it’s actually associated with the Temperance movement’s grand booze-free Coffee Palaces.
Today’s street-level dining room and offshoot casual parlour is dotted with art and cookbooks, with Marano’s tiny kitchen occupying the old hearth. It’s possible to pop in for snacks but the tasting menu is a treat.
So what do you eat when you can’t use sugar, pepper or chocolate? So much Victorian bounty! Leek skins are burnt to an ash that’s mixed into grissini dough, bringing a pepper-adjacent spiky-floral hit. The bread sticks are served with lush, tangy fermented red peppers and curdy stracciatella, made here with milk from nearby micro-dairy Sellar, which has 10 cows.
There’s always pasta, maybe rolled with spinach and dill, filled with goat cheese, and scattered with honey-candied walnuts, which are an outrageously good argument for ditching sugar.
Deer are majestic but also an invasive pest. I’m happy to eat the problem, especially when it’s as lovely as this braised venison shoulder, formed into a puck, wrapped in pickled radicchio and topped with pear, a fruity foil for fork-apart meat.
Making desserts without sugar is probably the most challenging part of the Midland project, though telling guests there’s no coffee must come close. House-made ricotta is whipped with almond meal and honey to make a soft, spongy cake base for quince.
Upwards of 80 per cent of the restaurant’s produce is grown in an offsite garden; blue corn is turned into tortillas and there have been experiments with sugar beets, once Victoria’s main source of sweetener.
Growing your own doesn’t save money but the ledger here isn’t solely financial. The food is beautiful and delicious but this restaurant also nourishes heart and soul.
The low-down
Atmosphere: A resonant vintage den, fizzing with creativity and
attentively hospitable
Go-to dishes: Spinach and dill pasta ($27); blue corn tortillas ($7); leek ash grissini ($16); venison shoulder ($45)
Drinks: Strictly Victorian, with all the wine, beer, spirits or non-alcoholic beverages produced within state lines.
Cost: Four-course menu $95 or seven-course menu $125 per person, excluding drinks; a la carte snacks from $7; mains from $35
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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