Review of Wickens at Royal Mail Hotel

Updated October 12, 2026,first published November 18, 2024

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

You've used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.

It may be three hours from Melbourne, but this visionary rural restaurant continues to reward diners from near and far. In a soaring, modern dining room chef Robin Wickens serves, often personally, more than a dozen dishes over three hours. Intricate and highly seasonal, many star pristine, scarce ingredients – maitake mushrooms, salsify, woodruff, even acorn – pulled from the owners’ farm and six-hectare kitchen garden.

Earthy Jerusalem artichoke and blue cheese blancmange is a triumph of flavour and texture. Beef is rolled with burdock root mousse, and crackle-crusted pork is paired with hispi cabbage. More bold: brittle brown sugar meringue encasing quince and passionfruit alongside bay leaf ice-cream.

The hotel boasts the largest private collection of Burgundy and Bordeaux in the southern hemisphere, but the views of starlit sky and Gariwerd’s jagged peaks cement this as Australian dining, through and through.

Good to know: Tours of the wine cellar ($25) and garden (included for diners) are entertaining and informative, led by the sommelier and chef.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

A dramatic dining room offset by easy, charming hospitality.