NOW EXPERIENCING:Harvest Kitchen

At Harvest Kitchen, submit yourself to the pleasures of living the good life Barossa-style with classic dishes of the region and an ingrained sense of hospitality that defines the place.

Harvest Kitchen vineyard
Why you goThere are 65 wine regions in Australia, but only one Barossa Valley. The Barossa is the most culturally distinctive of all vineyard communities, a special place with a way of life that still reflects the earthy, agrarian ways of its first settlers back in the early 1840s. It manifests itself in one of Australia’s only true regional cuisines – a celebration of smoke and salt, the pickled and the preserved. But even more significant than the classic dishes of the Barossa is an ingrained sense of hospitality that defines the place. A Barossan table is always fully laden, and the only thing a Barossa host fears more than a peckish guest is an empty glass. All the Barossa’s best restaurants are built on this foundation. Harvest Kitchen has perfected it.
Why you stayLunch is an artform in the Barossa, a dividing point in the middle of the day separating productivity and the serious pursuit of sybaritic pleasure.It says a lot about the philosophy driving Harvest Kitchen that lunch is offered, like all essential services, seven days a week. The food is the very essence of modern Barossan cooking. Shaped by seasonality, informed by innate understanding of the ingredients and elevated by skillful technique. It’s packing more flavour per square inch than you previously thought possible. This is the kind of food you get in a place hardwired to the rhythms of nature. When so many here are in constant communion with their vineyards, intimately aware of the changes within it at every point of the year, you know eating with the guidance of the seasons is just second nature.
food served at harvest kitchen
wines served at harvest kitchen
What drink to orderHarvest Kitchen has always shared its lovely old villa on a gentle slope looking over Tanunda with winemakers – initially the canny collective known as The Artisans of the Barossa, and now with the food-loving Calabria Family Wines. So, a great wine list is a given. But there’s something else on the list, a bit of an “insider’s secret”, you really should try. The revered David Franz Scrumpy is a cider of sorts, an idiosyncratic thirst killer that could only come from the singular mind of the brilliant Dave Lehmann. If the name sounds familiar, it should. Dave is the son of the legendary Peter Lehmann and a clear inheritor of the great man’s lust for life. This “scrumpy”’ exists because even Barossans can’t live on wine alone. A bracingly refreshing concoction made from Adelaide Hills apples and Barossa semillon and white frontignac grapes, this is a quencher devised by someone who truly knows the meaning of thirst.
Why we love it

From the day it threw open its doors in 2015, Harvest Kitchen has been guided by the cool, calm and capable Pete Little. He’s one of those people whose presence in a restaurant smooths out any rough edges and immediately puts the diner at ease. Peter’s business partner, Alex Potarzycki, a trained chef and winemaker, shares the same skill set, both having originally worked together at luxury accommodation venue The Louise. With these guys running the show, you couldn’t be in safer hands.

 

people enjoying at harvest kitchen barossa vineyard
Regular’s tip

You can tell a lot about a restaurant by the way it structures its menu. At Harvest Kitchen, it tells you everything. While you could take the option to make your own choices, when the top of the menu invites you to say “Feed me like a Barossan”, you just know what you have to do. Sit back, remove any overly restrictive articles of clothing, and submit yourself to the pleasures of living the good life Barossa-style.

 

food served at harvest kitchen
Don’t leave withoutHarvest Kitchen operates within the same old restored villa as the Calabria Family Wines tasting room, so while you can enjoy a bottle or two over lunch, it would be remiss to pass on the opportunity to taste through the whole range here. Maybe even split it into a before- and after-lunch exercise. The whites before lunch to sharpen the appetite, the sweet embrace of structural reds to round out a brilliant meal. This is our kind of one-stop shop.
Who to takeWe all probably know someone who subscribes to the erroneous idea that if you’ve seen one wine region, you’ve seen them all. That person has never been to the Barossa. Sure, row after row of trellised vines will look pretty much the same wherever you are, but a wine region is so much more than that which can be pruned and picked. Harvest Kitchen proves that by delivering a restaurant experience that is authentically Barossan, generous, delicious, nourishing for body and soul. Bring a first-timer here. They’ll be back before you know it.