Review of Montalto restaurant

This stylish multihyphenate venue – spanning restaurant, cellar door, sculpture park and casual dining – continues to lure a broad demographic. Parents sip wine while their children play on the lawn, multi-generational families celebrate milestones, and young couples dip a toe into fine dining.

In the glass and timber dining room, people are freed from the need to make decisions. An assured set menu of nine-or-so dishes is built around what’s growing in the kitchen garden. See the ethos in action with a plate of raw and preserved vegetables for swiping through cashew cream, each one the best version of itself. A briny current runs through perfectly steamed local mussels paired with sauce gribiche and salmon roe. Short-rib cooked in a dark beefy caramel of sherry and red wine is generous in every sense of the word.

A crack team of staff oversees the modern farmhouse-luxe building overlooking the vines and sculpture trail, while the estate’s friendliness extends to gardeners happy to conduct impromptu tours of the vast kitchen plot.

Good to know: The restaurant opens for dinner from Boxing Day until Labour Day in March.

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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