Kitti Gould
It takes a village to create a restaurant. At the new Three Blue Ducks at Burradoo Park Farm, around 90 minutes south of Sydney, the cast of characters is not so much a village as a small city. Led by co-owners Andy Allen and Darren Robertson, there’s also group executive chef Troy Crisante (formerly of Quay), head chef Rhys Connell (ex-The Gantry and Sepia), group beverage manager Mem Hemmings, plus the entire Burradoo Park Farm team, whose produce largely dictates the parameters of the menu.
That many cooks ˗ literal and figurative — might sound like chaos. Yet this is one of the most visionary, cohesive and beautifully executed openings NSW has seen in a long time. It’s the Ducks, dialled up.
Dinner is the seven-course Harvest Menu (lunch also has a five-course option). The Warm Welcome kicks things off, a cup of rich broth made from the chooks that cluck and squabble just a short walk from the restaurant’s door, given a liquorice kick from fennel fronds. Then a pristine Pambula oyster, whose minerality answers the pepperberry pings of its accompanying sorrel stem sorbet. A cigar of puntarelle stem stuffed with royal red prawn is all cool, crisp crunch.
Next is the cover crop salad, a dish that’s guaranteed to become a signature. A textural tangle of sprouts, legumes, buckwheat and pickled turnip, served with a butter dressing, it’s knobbled, silk-smooth, umami and gently bitter, all at once. Jump ahead a few courses and we land at fire-roasted lamb with a shiso and yoghurt dressing. The lamb cuts will change regularly, butchered directly from whole carcasses.
Hemmings’ drinks list is similarly dynamic: there are stayers from Highlands producer Dawning Day Farm and her own Hunter Valley label Meredith, but she also corrals micro-producers who might have enough for a pallet one week, or just a few bottles the next.
Every dish stands up on its own and makes absolute sense as part of the whole. Cutlery rests made of horseshoes, nooks by the fire for a late-night whisky, layers of leather, wool and wood. Paul Kelly and Crowded House on the playlist, a soaring cathedral ceiling with ancient, exposed beams. It all just works.
If you talk to anyone behind Three Blue Ducks at Burradoo Park Farm — which aside from the restaurant is also a bakery, café and produce store, as well as the livestock and vegetable farm led by philanthropist Annie Cannon-Brookes — they’ll tell you all about its core principles: regenerative farming, local producers, and community. All of that is important, but feelgood doesn’t always taste good. Here, it really does.
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