Climb this spiral staircase for the long lunch of your dreams
Up a spiral staircase, on the top floor of an 1858 building that was once the
Daylesford grocer, there’s now a cosy dining room lined with artwork, arranged salon-style, on mustard-coloured walls. Stepping up the tight whorl is like spinning yourself into a fantasy: all your dining dreams are about to come true.
There’s the mood, attentive but casual and oh-so-warm, as though any worries you have can be allayed by simply shrugging off a coat. There’s the structure: a set menu (two courses early in the week, four on weekends) with few decisions required. Add oysters? Room for cheese? Where’s your thirst leaning? And there’s the food, of course. It’s all sourced locally, from growers known by name.
You can engage with this as much as you like: there’s no brittle culinary ego hovering and demanding you fall into silence with every lovely bite. Your informed waiter knows about the saucisson (perhaps crafted from Brooklands pork, a free-range farm in nearby Blampied) or the polenta (from corn harvested by Tumpinyeri Growers over yonder, milled on-site by co-head chefs Oliver Edwards and Bree Smith). But you can just keep sipping the wine (maybe the grenache from Dilworth and Allain, who have a cellar door around the corner) and sink into a reverie.
The menu changes weekly. That polenta might be the smooshy base for octopus
braised in red wine, or pork cooked in sage and milk, the latter from Tess Sellar, who runs a dairy herd of just 10 cows. It’s rustic stuff, made for eating, not Instagram. Even so, the salad gleams in its dressing, every leaf just so, and the roasted flathead flakes easily, as though a card sharp is dealing a royal flush, and the sweet cream squeezes lusciously from a crisp-crackled choux puff.
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Merenda turns five this month. Owners Andy and Clare Ainsworth are Sydney
escapees with backgrounds in hospitality and wine (him) and illustration (her). In 2020, they decided central Victoria was something of an antipodean Provence and built a life there, followed by a wine bar in Daylesford’s divey old pizza shop.
The first iteration of Merenda was beautiful and fun, though a little clunky, because there was no way to separate boisterous drinkers from special-occasion diners. The current space, inhabited a year ago, means diners are ensconced up those spiral stairs, while drop-ins are downstairs at the bar, where the food
is as good, just a little simpler. Maybe there’s duck: the grilled breast appears in the bistro with lentils and braised greens, while the legs are confited for the bar. Everyone wins.
This two-speed version of Merenda is fascinating in a business sense. There are 16 seats downstairs, 18 upstairs, and a handful on the pavement, which is slightly fewer than the old place. Despite the shrinkage, Andy tells me the new iteration is actually more profitable. The set menu means a certain spend is assured, and wastage is reduced.
In a time when we are losing indie restaurants to a cost crunch and the ongoing march of groups, there’s pleasure in supporting an enterprise with a community-first ethos, especially when being here feels wonderful, and everything is so very delicious.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Warm, gentle country hospitality
Go-to dishes: Spring vegetable risotto; crudites and tapenade; grilled flathead; choux puff with rhubarb (all part of the set menu)
Drinks: A happily biased wine list leaning to the local area, Piedmont in Italy and the Jura in France. Every bottle has a story and is there for a reason.
Cost: $65/$120 (two-/four-course set menu) per person, excluding drinks
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine.
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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