Make a date for the Tweed
Tipping a Good Food Guide hat to nine hot restaurants
The humble Tweed is emerging as the east coast’s hottest new food haven, with nine restaurants hatted in this year’s Australian Good Food Guide (AGFG).
Ranging from longtime mainstay Fins at Kingscliff to tres cool Bistro Livi at Murwillumbah, these swanky eateries are showcasing the best produce the region has to offer, whether paddock to plate or trawler to tagine.
And diners from as far as Sydney and Brisbane are making moves to secure a booking.
The nine venues – Mavis’ Kitchen, No. 35, Fins, Bistro Livi, Tweed River House, Taverna, Potager, Paper Daisy and Pipit – were judged by the AGFG on ingredients, taste, presentation, technique, value and consistency. Check out six of the nine here.
Mavis’ Kitchen, Uki
Uki’s Mavis’ Kitchen and Cabins has for 15 years been as popular with visitors as hiking the nearby Mt Warning/Wollumbin summit.
But with the contentious closure of the mountain trail during the pandemic and the recent fight to reopen it, Mavis’ general manager Nigel Chouri said the much-loved venue has this month scaled back to just hosting private functions while six months of renovations take place.
In 2022, access roads to the venue were smashed by the horrific floods, but Mr Chouri said the restaurant had always “pivoted and adapted to remain as popular as ever”.
He said the Tweed, as a food lover’s region, had in recent years “dramatically moved forward”.
“There has always been incredible produce but there has definitely been a noticeable shift. You’ve got the likes of Pipit, Fleet and Bistro Livy getting ultra creative with what they do – and that creativity is something that should be championed,” he said.
Fins, Kingscliff
Stephen “Snowy” Snow has been the mastermind behind Fins at Kingscliff for an astonishing 32 years and says “if you’re still standing in the same restaurant five years after you open it, you’re bloody doing something right”.
The surfer, ocean lover and seafood guru said he would always love Fins, which he bought from the previous owners three decades ago “because the name sounded cool”.
Mr Snow just returned from the Basque region of Spain, where he spent six months cooking and “eating extremely well” with Michelin Star chefs.
It was in this bucolic countryside he forged several new dishes he said may just end up on the menu at Fins.
But he said the restaurant’s enduring popularity was due to some longstanding dishes, including Snowy’s Fish, which has been on the menu for 20 years.
“Snowy’s Fish just used to be the quick dinner I’d whip up for myself. But the previous owners tried it one day and said, ‘Mate, you’ve got to put it on the menu’,” he said.
“I reckon that dish is ordered two to three times more than anything else on the menu.”
A trailblazer in the Tweed’s dining scene, Mr Snow said he still loved the creativity but was no longer “the guy standing behind a bench chopping onions for 15 hours a day”.
An “ocean obsessive”, Mr Snow said he knew every local fisherman: “I want the best fish and I’ll pay for it”.
‘The array of warm water fish here is brilliant. I’ll never put salmon on the menu or anything that isn’t local. There’s just something about the fish here that fully excites me. I’m a hedonist for it.”
Tweed River House, Murwillumbah
Gregory Lording got off to a rough start when he bought the 117-year-old heritage Murwillumbah dwelling that would become his restaurant Tweed River House.
Not long after opening, the 2022 floods wrought havoc across the Tweed township, where Mr Lording saw 20ft of raging water reach the building’s top deck, taking an 800bottle wine cellar with it.
“The funny thing is we found vintage French wines in a field over two miles away caked in mud,” he said.
The Provence-style potager restaurant was opened because of “the Tweed’s ability to mimic the best of that culture”, with its “fertile farm land and rivers”, and “the produce to plate style sticks really well in the Tweed”.
Mr Lording said the restaurant had appealed to sophisticated diners from Brisbane, Byron Bay and the Gold Coast.
“The Tweed does what other places can’t. Here we can truly celebrate the long lunch and the relaxing dinner,” he said.
“We also focus on staff retention and treating the staff as a family. That’s different in cities. We want to invest in our staff for the long haul.”
Tweed River House’s head chef is Cuban-born, Montrealraised Dayron Concepcion, who joined the team five months ago.
Mr Lording said the chef change had “taken the food up another level”.
Bistro Livi, Murwillumbah
Ewen Crawford and business partners Danni and Nicole Wilson met while working in Melbourne’s iconic Spanish restaurant MoVida, deciding two years ago to venture north to open their own spot. They found that Murwillumbah ticked all the right boxes, coupled with a “gap in the market for a great neighbourhood bistro”.
“Murwillumbah is a great little town and a vibrant hub. We are fortunate to be in the arts precinct where there’s lots happening,” he said.
Mr Crawford said since opening, the restaurant has gone from strength to strength – a reception he attributed to the Tweed’s “fabulous” produce.
“There’s great produce coming out of the region and, while we can’t say everything we use is local, we do try to make that stuff shine,” he said.
No. 35, Cabarita Beach
No. 35’s Daniel Medcalf grew up in nearby Byron Bay, a place he says “I’d have no real chance of having a business – or buying a house”.
But those odds were stacked in his favour, because the Tweed has gone from being “the next best thing” to a “bit of an untapped gem”.
After years embroiled in Sydney’s fast-paced food scene working at the likes of Icebergs Dining and Bar at Bondi and Surry Hills’ Assiette, Mr Medcalf yearned for a major sea change.
“Cabarita, Kingscliff and Pottsville are just powering,” he said.
“Once upon a time they were considered a bit of a backwater and now they are shining pretty bright.
“The great thing about the Tweed is you can operate at a fraction of the cost of the Gold Coast or Byron.”
Mr Medcalf said, although he’s now “working harder than if I was working for someone else”, he couldn’t go back to it.
“It’s the inevitable path of any chef who wants to progress, opening your own restaurant,” he said.
Mr Medcalf said the Tweed’s local produce “speaks for itself”.
“The farmers markets are a beautiful thing. It’s not just chefs getting access, but the local community gets a share in something special, too,” he said.
And while he admits it has been “trial and error” in opening his first business, Mr Medcalf said he’s going to “keep on doing what I’m doing”.
Pipit, Pottsville
Before chef Ben Devlin and his wife opened Pipit five years ago, he steered the ship at Cabarita’s Paper Daisy in the uber trendy Halcyon House hotel.
He said the Tweed’s dining scene had a number of advantages including its “welcoming atmosphere, great climate and stellar soil conditions”.
“There’s lots in common here with the growing conditions in the Mediterranean, South East Asia and South
America – and the chefs here each have something that’s pretty different,” Mr Devlin said.
He said Pipit had been fortunate in notching up a number of awards since opening.
“We are super lucky,” he said.
Pipit focuses on its ninecourse set menu, but Mr Devlin said the casual bistro menu offered a few days per week has “a little something for everyone”.
Mr Devlin said Pipit had often been described as “coastal dining”, but: “We like to think of ourselves as a produce-driven, minimal waste woodfire restaurant”.
He said the Tweed had produce that worked well when fresh.
“We are loving tropical fruit at the moment and it doesn’t travel well, so we are well-suited to have it on the menu,” he said.
“Black sapote and jackfruit are two we have at the moment.
“There’s also Panama berries, which unbelievably taste like buttered popcorn.”
Mr Devlin said the restaurant had recently received a large haul of local Bunya nuts, a food long consumed by Indigenous Australians.
“It has such a unique native flavour and they look like dragon eggs from Game of Thrones. There’s so much you can do with it,” he said.