Rodney Dunn

Rodney Dunn grew up on a farm in rural New South Wales, in the flat agricultural country of the Riverina. That early life set the course for a career that would eventually loop back to the land, though not before a long detour through some of Australia's most demanding kitchens and editorial rooms.

He trained as a chef under Tetsuya Wakuda at Sydney's celebrated Tetsuya's before moving into food media, joining Gourmet Traveller as Food Editor. It was a natural fit, but life behind a desk eventually pulled in the wrong direction. Inspired by the River Cottage approach to cooking and country living, and unable to find anything in Australia that connected that earth-and-kitchen relationship he was chasing, Rodney and his wife and co-founder Séverine Demanet made the move to Tasmania in 2007. The gap in the market was the idea.

That calculated leap of faith funded the first chapter of the Agrarian Kitchen: the Old Schoolhouse in Lachlan, in Tasmania's Derwent Valley, transformed into the state's first hands-on, farm-based cooking school. It opened in 2008 and in 2010 was voted Australia's Greatest Gourmet Food Experience by Australian Traveller Magazine.

The next chapter began in 2015 when Rodney and Séverine fell in love with the Bronte building in New Norfolk's Willow Court, the town's former mental asylum. With expansive spaces, sweeping windows and high ceilings lined with original pressed metal, the building begged to be filled with diners. The Agrarian Kitchen Eatery opened in June 2017 and just four months later was awarded two hats and named Best Regional Restaurant in Australia by the National Good Food Guide. A kiosk followed in 2020, offering a more casual entry point; house-made pastries, cakes, sandwiches and salads served among umbrellas, picnic tables and rugs. In 2022, the cooking school relocated from Lachlan to Willow Court, joining the restaurant and kiosk in a purpose-built wing of the building.

At the heart of it all is the kitchen garden, positioned just metres behind the Bronte building. Seasonal fruit and vegetables, a berry patch, greenhouse, shade house, nursery, orchards and citrus grove inform every aspect of the menu and drive creativity across the restaurant, kiosk and cooking school. It is at once a working resource and a space for learning.

What Rodney and Séverine have built over nearly two decades is something that didn't exist in Australia when they went looking for it: a place where the connection between grower, cook and diner is not a concept but a daily practice. Tasmania's exceptional produce; its cool-climate fruit and vegetables, its cheeses, its seafood and its small producers, has always been the foundation. The Agrarian Kitchen gave that produce a home worthy of it, and in doing so helped place Tasmanian food firmly on the national culinary map.