FOOD REVIEW: Snow in the Vineyards
- Shari Lockwood
- Apr 21
- 5 min read
A recent visit by myself and several other members of the Discovering Hospitality team to Orange County in NSW, Australia, led us to the Hotel Canobolas.
What a delightful treat and beginning to our gastronomic adventure.
The car doors open, and the air bites harder than expected. What was a mild Sydney week has turned sharply elemental on the other side of the ranges, windows fogging, breath visible, the kind of cold that surprises the body before the mind catches up. Only later do we learn that Orange woke that morning under an unusual and fleeting dusting of snow, an early-season anomaly that felt almost theatrical in its timing, as though the land were setting the stage for the meal to follow.
That meal is Locally Grown, a multi-course celebration of Orange's extraordinary food and wine region, presented by The Point Group upstairs at the Hotel Canobolas during Orange Food Week; Australia's longest-running regional food festival, now in its 35th year.
Culinary Director Joel Bickford and Sommelier Alex Kirkwood are at the helm, guiding a room filled with anticipation and the soft clink of glassware warming to hand. What unfolds over the next few hours is less a conventional dinner service than an immersive portrait of a region, plated with care and poured with precision.
The Setting
The dining room at Hotel Canobolas is intimate and unhurried, the kind of space that invites conversation rather than performance. The Point Group has been the custodian of this room since 2021, operating in partnership with the Sukkar family, and the event carries the quiet confidence of a team still deepening its relationship with its surroundings.
Bickford, based in Sydney but originally from the Blue Mountains, speaks of Orange with the ease of someone who crosses the ranges willingly and often.
"It's not just about the dinner, but about the people we meet along the way… that's really what makes it special for us." ~ Joel Bickford
That sincerity sets the tone for everything that follows.
The Menu
The philosophy of Locally Grown is immediately evident in the opening course. Bickford had planned something light, "I wanted something fresh tonight," he says with a laugh, "because I thought it might be warm. But I woke up this morning, looked at my phone, and it was 3 degrees outside." The joke lands easily; the dish, however, is anything but a compromise.
FIRST COURSE
Charcuterie from Cured, an artisanal producer just up the road, arrives alongside Nashdale heirloom vegetables, whipped sheep's milk, and a bright 2023 Colmar Estate Riesling. It is a plate that speaks fluently of proximity and seasonality: ingredients that have not travelled far but have arrived with intention. The riesling's citrus lift cuts cleanly through the richness of the charcuterie, an opening that sets expectations high.
SECOND COURSE
A mushroom pie filled with foraged varieties sourced from Robbie Robinson of The Market Cat carries something wilder and more elemental, a hint of the forests beyond the town's edges. It is earthy and deeply savory, the kind of dish that rewards slow eating.
THIRD COURSE
Raw Margra lamb with buttermilk, peas, pistachio, and clover is clean, green, and quietly expressive. The lamb is pristine, and the combination of buttermilk and pistachio offers a gentle textural interplay that doesn't overstay its welcome.
FOURTH COURSE
Borenore black figs with bullhorn peppers, stracciatella, and Pedro Ximénez navigates the border between sweetness and smoke with admirable composure. Matched with a 2023 Bloodwood Wines 'Schubert' Chardonnay, stone fruit and subtle oak, the pairing demonstrates Kirkwood's assured hand throughout the evening.
Main Courses
The mains arrive with the confidence of a kitchen that knows its produce deeply.
PASTA COURSE
Orecchiette folded through Genovese sauce, enriched with milk-braised Trunkey suckling pig and cavolo nero, is a triumph of slow cooking, yielding and generous, the pig tender enough to melt into the sauce. A 2024 Swinging Bridge '#009' Gamay, light-bodied and fragrant, offers a pleasingly unexpected counterpoint.
MAIN PROTEIN
Speckle Park picanha arrives with saffron milk caps, chestnuts, and fermented garlic, a combination that layers umami upon umami with the kind of restraint that prevents it from toppling into excess. A 2023 ChaLou 'Estate' Syrah, structured and spiced, anchors the plate with authority. Around it, the seasonal sides are as considered as anything on the plate: a deeply gratinéed turnip, coal-roasted corn with a satisfying char, and radicchio lifted with local beets, radish, and raspberry vinegar, bitter, sweet, and sharp in equal measure.
Dessert & Cheese
Dessert is indulgence without apology: an intensely rich chocolate and quince tart glazed with Cottesbrook honey and finished with Jersey cream. It is the kind of final note that silences the table, the sort of dish that, when it arrives, ends all conversation and demands full attention.
Yet it is the cheese course from Second Mouse that proves the evening's most persistent pleasure. The Roobie Blue, medium-firm, deeply buttery, its salt-laced finish lingering long after the plate is cleared, is compelling enough to inspire a return visit to the producer's market days later. It is the mark of a truly excellent regional cheese course: one that sends you hunting for the source.
"The Roobie Blue... compelling enough to inspire a return visit to the producer's market days later."
The Real Deal
Locally Grown is not simply a showcase of culinary skill; it is a statement about place. Each course builds not only flavour but geography, mapping the region's abundance in real time: cool-climate wines, foraged mushrooms, truffled cheeses, apples, honey, and an ever-expanding palette of seasonal produce. For chefs and hospitality operators across New South Wales, Orange has become a working model of connection, a region where sourcing is dialogue rather than transaction.
The broader Orange Food Week context only deepens this impression. The most anticipated event, Forage, transforms the landscape into a roaming feast; thousands moving between wineries in a half-day pilgrimage, tasting their way through the district's generosity.
From Small Acres' Femme Fatale rosé cider to Swinging Bridge Pinot Noir, and even a bright strawberry Bellini water kefir from Bianca's Kitchen served atop a gentle hillside, the experience is less a tasting menu than a living map of regional identity.
For The Point Group, Locally Grown represents both opportunity and affirmation. Still relatively new to Orange's hospitality landscape, the team is building credibility not through spectacle, but through sincerity. "At the end of the day, we cook food every day," Bickford reflects. "So whilst we can always put up a great feed, it's really about the journey for us and helping us connect to Orange too."
Our Verdict
As the evening winds down and the final glasses are emptied, there is a sense that Locally Grown has done exactly what it set out to do: connect kitchen to farm, city to country, and guests to a landscape that is as generous as it is unexpected. The cooking is accomplished and deeply rooted in its surroundings; the wine pairings are thoughtful and occasionally inspired; and the region, on this particular evening, makes an overwhelmingly convincing case for itself.
"Thank you for coming out here and helping us celebrate Orange," Bickford says with quiet conviction. "Because there's a lot to celebrate."
He is not wrong.
