The Long Apron at Spicers Clovelly Estate

“We are dedicated to ensuring our guests have a completely unique and memorable dining experience. We hope to educate our diners through food, giving them something they can't make at home and that they can get excited about. Provenance is important to us; we support local artisan producers and farmers and base our menu on the seasons. Farms grow specifically for us and we commit to taking the whole crop. We have close relationships with our suppliers, from Noosa Earth Mushrooms, who take our coffee grounds to grow their oyster mushrooms, to Schultz Family Farm, who ethically farm rare breeds of pigs and raise them in families to ensure they have happy lives.”

Fig leaf curd with fresh figs, native honey from the restaurant grounds, and oyster mushrooms; Kenilworth yogurt parfait with elderflower from the restaurant garden; marinated full blood Angus skirt steak with spent grains from Sunshine Coast brewery, chard lettuce, and beef tendon.

The Long Apron’s mutable, multi-course menu is bedded in the seasons; in partnerships with local farms who grow to order; in what can be gathered wild from the nine-hectare property, and in the whim of innovative Chef Chris Hagen, a British transplant with roots embedded in French culinary tradition.

The restaurant’s waste-culling, sustainable ethos is present on every bespoke plate – shells and heads of freshwater Alba Aquaculture yabbies reduced to an intense bisque, herbs foraged from forest and sea-fringe, slices of tart green strawberry sourced from a nearby farm. Ethically-produced meat is used across the menu, but there’s a slight plant-based bias. Like a Walker’s Farm pastured egg yolk, brined then frozen at minus thirty, encouraged with a fork prod to release its intense creaminess over pickled, deep-fried local oyster mushrooms, celeriac cooked in spent coffee grounds, slivers of floury, nutty chestnuts, toasted quinoa and the ying/yang of miso. It’s is the perfect exemplar of The Long Apron’s and Chef Hagen’s style – a head in the clouds, but feet firmly connected to the earth.

• Awarded 1 Chef Hat at the 2018 & 2019 Good Food Guide Awards
• Awarded 2 Glasses at the 2018 Australian Wine List of the Year
• Winner, 2018 QHA Best Restaurant - Accommodation/Hotels