A new restaurant in Belligen
The small town of Bellingen is getting a new restaurant, the sort of place that could draw people to the mid north coast of New South Wales.
The restaurant, Popla Bellingen, is opening this week in the town located between Sydney and Brisbane.
Claire van Vuuren and Mitch Grady, the pair behind Bloodwood in Newtown, had initially planned to open it in Sydney.
But all that changed when they drove up to the mid-north coast and dropped in on the little riverside town of Bellingen, a place best known for its waterfalls, waterholes, arts and culture.
“We just fell in love,” van Vuuren told Broadsheet. “It instantly took away a lot of the stress that comes with living in the city.”
A completely different world from Newtown and so that was it.
The restaurant is a freestanding, heritage-listed cottage that was once home to one of the town’s popular restaurants.
The pair were determined to keep the heritage features so they didn’t make any changes to the outside of the property.
What they did instead was open up the kitchen, breaking down walls and turning it into an open-plan space.
They refurbished it with light-coloured wood and brought in street artist Georgia Hill to design a black-and-white, geometric mural for each of the walls.
They will have the fireplace running and the menu will feature smoked goats cheese, charred greens, wood-fired chicken, and smoked sake.
There will also be dry-aged rib-eye steak, salt-baked grouper, and oxtail dumplings.
The area is well-known for its dairy and macadamia farms so the pair have committed the restaurant to sourcing local produce. Even the cocktails will feature native ingredients for Saltbush Margarita and Davidson’s Plum Cosmopolitan.
They are also making their own flour, charcuterie, bread and cheese.
With room for 60 people, it will have outdoor deck dining and a wine bar with a sit-down area.
by Leon Gettler, June 7th 2017
