Walking to your table through this historic stone building in the Southern Highlands, past fireplace-warmed rooms filled with fellow road-trippers, is enchantingly transformative. Formal restaurant artifices melt away until you feel as if you’re dining in a friend’s country home. The agrarian fantasy continues on the menu, which chef Matty Roberts builds around ingredients from the surrounding area and might include Manchego, leek and seaweed croquettes glossy with truffled honey, or a tower of craggy, sriracha-glazed fried chicken. The cooking is sharp and the produce blindingly fresh, but what separates Eschalot from other pastoral dining experiences is a rare type of enthusiasm shared by the staff and other diners similarly disarmed by the conviviality of it all. From the hearths in the dining rooms to the heart on the plates, Eschalot offers the kind of home-style dining experience you just can’t get at home.
This review was made independently for the Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide. The guide’s reviewers visit unannounced and pay their way. To learn more about the process, click here.
Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide 2023
Our guide gives a yearly snapshot of the best restaurants to eat at right now. The best-rated restaurants, as judged by the reviewers’ first-hand experience, form our national Top 82.
