Your weekly taste of Australia’s best food, drinks and spirited discoveries
Welcome back to Uncorked & Forked.
Father’s Day is almost upon us, so this week we’re starting with a few considerably better ideas than another pair of socks. There’s a whopping 650g Wagyu rib for $50, smoked prime rib, bottomless beer and a long lunch on Sydney Harbour.
Then we’re off to Frankland River for a Shiraz I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this week, underground in the Grampians for dinner, north for a month devoted to Territory seafood and across the Pacific to see why Las Vegas suddenly has 24 new reasons for food lovers to pay attention.
There’s also an Australian country pub with one of the most famous names in music, a beautiful idea bringing families back around the table and some Italian grandmothers who know rather more about pasta than most of us ever will. Let’s get into it.
If Dad really does need another pair of socks, by all means proceed.
For everyone else, Father’s Day falls on Sunday, September 6, and restaurants around Australia have started rolling out everything from giant slabs of Wagyu and smoked prime rib to French feasts, harbour cruises and bottomless beer.
We’ve gone looking for a few that caught our eye, starting with 650 grams of Australian Wagyu for $50!
The Komo may have produced the most compelling argument we’ve seen for abandoning Father’s Day lunch at home.
For one day only, Dad can get a 650g Roam Australian Wagyu bone-in rib for $50, served with shoestring fries, béarnaise, red wine jus and mustard.
There’s also a steak-knife set being given away to one dad who orders the special.
At 650 grams, we suspect sharing will be discussed. Whether Dad agrees is another matter.
At Springrock, Father’s Day is considerably less complicated.
The Bourke Street pub is smoking prime rib for its $25 Father’s Day Sunday roast, served with fire-roasted vegetables, a big Yorkshire pudding and jus from midday.
That’s an unusually good-value Melbourne Father’s Day lunch — and leaves enough change for a pint.
We already know DOLLY from our earlier travels, and its Father’s Day offering is worth another look.
The underground bistro at Le Méridien is doing a four-course French lunch for $85, created by Bordeaux-born executive chef Hervé Borghini. Dad also gets an Old Fashioned, beer or wine on arrival.
Four courses and Dad’s first drink taken care of. Sensible.
If sitting still isn’t Dad’s thing, Captain Cook Cruises is putting Father’s Day lunch on the water.
Its Harbour View Long Lunch combines three-course à la carte dining with up to four hours cruising Sydney Harbour, plus a complimentary house drink and sweet treat for Dad.
It’s lunch with a 360-degree view — and nobody in the family has to nominate themselves to do the dishes.
This could be dangerous.
At Bar Lettera, Father’s Day is being done Italian-style with a long lunch featuring bistecca steak and fries that keep coming, plus Dad’s first beer on the house.
Sometimes a restaurant concept requires very little further explanation.
And over in Perth, Fenians Irish Pub is keeping things beautifully straightforward: a Sunday roast and pint of Heineken for $29 on Father’s Day.
No degustation. No matching flight. Roast. Pint. Dad.
I nearly included this in the six, because it’s wonderfully Uncorked.
Harry’s Restaurant & Bar is doing an $89 Father’s Day barbecue buffet, with slow-roasted meats, wings, burgers, loaded potatoes and desserts.
But the kicker is for Dad: complimentary bottomless Carlton Draught and Four Pines Pacific Ale throughout the two-hour lunch.
I’d actually consider swapping this in for DOLLY, because we’ve featured DOLLY before and “bottomless beer for Dad” is much more clickable.
Blackbutt 2023 is the flagship Cabernet Sauvignon from this family-owned Frankland River producer, made from premium estate fruit and named after one of the native trees found around the property.
It’s a beautiful expression of Cabernet: blackcurrant and red berries, a floral lift, plenty of depth and beautifully judged oak, but without losing the elegance that makes Frankland River reds so appealing.
And I’m not alone. WA wine critic Ray Jordan awarded the 2023 96 points, describing it as both powerful and elegant, with the structure to cellar for around 15 years.
My Verdict: This is a step up. There’s richness and concentration, but what I really like is how composed it feels: beautiful fruit, fine tannins and none of the heaviness you sometimes get with big Cabernet. At $65 it’s special-occasion territory, but there’s plenty of wine in the bottle to justify it.
The Region: Frankland River, Great Southern, Western Australia
Best with: A really good steak, roast lamb or slow-cooked beef.
$65 cellar door.
At the other end of the colour spectrum, here’s a Victorian white that won’t do much damage to the weekly budget.
Cold Snap’s 2025 Pinot Gris is built around freshness, with pear, apple and citrus, a little floral lift and crisp acidity. It’s dry, easy drinking and very much the sort of bottle to have cold and ready when friends drop in.
The other attraction is the price: Dan Murphy’s has it on member special, making it a particularly inexpensive way into a current-vintage Victorian Pinot Gris.
My Verdict: At this price, we’re not looking for a wine that demands an hour of contemplation. We want something fresh, crisp and enjoyable to pour with lunch. This fits the brief nicely.
The Region: Cool-climate Victoria
Best with: Fresh seafood, grilled fish, chicken or a lazy Sunday lunch.
Grampians BBQ Festival | Halls Gap, Victoria | September 4–6
The inaugural Grampians BBQ Festival fires up in Halls Gap next weekend with three days of low-and-slow barbecue, live-fire cooking, regional wine, craft beer, small-batch spirits and blues and roots music.
There’ll be barbecue competitions, an Asado Arena cooking over open flame, a makers’ market and 11 live acts, while Friday begins with a free BBQ Trail through Halls Gap.
They’ve even scheduled a Dad Joke Competition.
Frankly, Father’s Day planning may now be complete.
NT Seafood Month | Northern Territory | September
September is shaping up rather nicely for seafood lovers in the Top End, with the inaugural NT Seafood Month celebrating the people who catch, grow and serve some of the Territory’s best produce.
Restaurants, retailers and tourism operators will put local seafood front and centre, with barramundi, mud crab, prawns, Spanish mackerel and snapper among the local catch getting its moment.
There’ll even be opportunities to try pearl meat, one of the more unusual delicacies to come from Territory waters.
Why we’d go: Fresh Territory seafood, warm September weather and somebody else doing the cooking. Hard to find much wrong with that combination.
One of the loveliest food projects on the internet is returning to the bookshelf.
Pasta Grannies: Eat Everything by Vicky Bennison arrives in Australia on September 2, continuing her celebration of Italian home cooks and recipes handed down through generations.
The Pasta Grannies project has travelled across Italy recording older women preparing dishes they’ve cooked for their families over decades, preserving regional techniques and recipes that might otherwise disappear.
The new book continues that mission through the glorious prism of Italian home cooking.
Why it’s on my radar: Older women, family recipes and culinary traditions worth preserving. What’s not to love?
You could hardly invent a better name for an Australian country pub. The Pub With No Beer sits about 27 kilometres from Macksville on the NSW Mid North Coast and is forever connected with Slim Dusty’s 1957 classic A Pub With No Beer.
The history has a twist. The song grew from a poem inspired by a Queensland pub running dry during World War II, while songwriter Gordon Parsons maintained his version was about the Taylors Arm pub near where he grew up.
Slim Dusty’s recording did the rest.
Today it’s still very much a working country pub, serving meals and — thankfully — cold beer.
Our take: A pub famous for having no beer that now makes a perfectly good living selling it. That’s Australian enough for us.
We’ve drunk wine in cellars and vineyards and recently we even met people making it 20 metres beneath the ocean.
Apparently Uncorked & Forked is slowly heading underground.
On September 19, Seppelt Great Western is opening its historic underground cellars for one of its limited dining experiences.
The evening begins with sparkling before guests descend into the famous Drives: kilometres of hand-dug tunnels beneath the winery with more than 160 years of winemaking history.
There are wine and canapé stops along the way before guests settle underground for a three-course dinner matched with Seppelt’s Icon wines.
Our only concern is remembering which tunnel leads outside after dinner.
Las Vegas has never exactly struggled to give Australians reasons to visit, but its dining scene has just added another.
The city picked up 24 distinctions in the inaugural MICHELIN Guide Southwest, unveiled in Las Vegas this week.
At the pointy end, Restaurant de Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand collected two MICHELIN Stars, while Restaurant Guy Savoy, é by José Andrés and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon were among the city’s restaurants awarded one Star.
And the timing is handy for Australian travellers.
From December 29, Qantas launches the first non-stop commercial flights between Australia and Las Vegas, flying Sydney–Vegas three times a week aboard a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Vegas may still have the casinos, shows and rather questionable decisions made after midnight.
But increasingly, you might go for dinner.
We’ve featured plenty of long lunches in Uncorked & Forked, but this one comes with a rather lovely idea behind it.
Tahbilk Estate is searching for an Australian family that has spent too long apart and will bring them back around the same table for its inaugural Long Lost Lunch.
Co-hosting will be Saroo Brierley, whose extraordinary 25-year search for his birth family inspired the Oscar-nominated film Lion.
The selected multi-generational family will be reunited at Tahbilk Estate, with flights and accommodation covered by the winery.
As Brierley told Starts at 60: “We tell ourselves there will always be next year, but that isn’t guaranteed for anyone.”
A long lunch built around good food, wine and getting people back together? That’s a concept with some heart.
Until next Friday… keep discovering, keep tasting and never drive past a country pub on an empty stomach.
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