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Gourmet Traveller’s Best Destination Dining: Chauncy

Heathcote, Victoria
The interiors of Chauncy in Heathcote, VictoriaLeon Schoots

Great restaurants implicitly understand where and what they are. In that context, Chauncy, a country Victorian restaurant channelling a regional French one, might appear to be primed for an identity crisis or a bit of tri-colour pastiche at the very least. Instead, it triumphs because its owners, French-born and trained chef Louis Naepels and Australian sommelier Tess Murray, bring both mad skills and impressive experience to their restaurant, coupled with deep understanding of how to accurately translate French provincial vernacular into an Aussie regional one.

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Murray and Naepels have runs on the board in Melbourne restaurants (Supernormal and Grossi Florentino, respectively) but also spent a year running a bistro in the Basque region of France. Their choice of an historic Gold Rush-era building in a region increasingly on the radar for the excellence of its produce and wine reflects that experience. It gifts Chauncy with an immediate Euro-style air of age and gravitas while also being an accurate and nuanced expression of place.

The light-filled dining room in the sandstone former surveyor’s office also conjures the right atmosphere via linen-dressed tables, uniformed waiters, arrangements of local foliage and mismatched crockery, setting the mood even before the gougères that signal the beginning of the four-course menu du jour have landed.

But as Naepels’ cooking reveals itself – subtle and skilled, bringing clean-edged flavours always centring ingredient over technique – the clarity of vision becomes even more delightful. Ingredients are sourced from “just up the road” or “from some friends of ours”, whether that’s some amazingly vibrant chard presented as a caramelised gratin, a textbook chou farci – the cabbage leaves stuffed with a local free-range minced pork and sitting on a pomme purée from spuds grown nearby – or a clafoutis made with local berries.

Murray’s service style, her impeccable cellar and her applause-worthy ability to talk about wine without ever being boring is what sets the pace here – languid and casual but always offering a safe pair of hands with no detail going unnoticed. If Murray tells you that a glass of particularly great grower Champagne would go brilliantly with the bagna cauda and radishes (picked that morning from the kitchen garden) or that a friend of hers is making a particularly good chenin blanc, the best idea is to nod and let yourself be led. She and Naepels are people who emphatically understand what they’re doing.

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Chauncy

French

178 High St, Heathcote

(03) 4432 7951

chauncy.com.au

Price guide $$

Bookings Essential

Wheelchair access Yes

Open Lunch Fri-Mon

Find all finalists for the Gourmet Traveller Best Destination Dining Award here. To see the full list of winners in this year’s Gourmet Traveller Annual Restaurant Awards, head over here.

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