2020 Eat Drink Design Awards: Best Restaurant Design

Jury comment

This deeply personal labour of love for chef Brigitte Hafner winningly captures the warmth and relaxed hospitality of a domestic kitchen. The immersive open-plan space in Victoria’s Red Hill wine region encourages guests to engage in the experience as if they were in their own homes. Hafner’s blackened cooking station – loosely based on a carpenter’s workbench – sits in front of a woodfired brick hearth, where she presents a new menu each day based on seasonal produce sourced from the property. The original building, set amid a spectacular rural landscape, has been sensitively modernized by Hafner’s partner, architect Patrick Ness of Cox Architecture, and provides a complete, holistic escape from a busy world. The remarkably unfussy, functional design facilitates a focus on sustainability and longevity at every level. Despite its vintage farmhouse aesthetic, Osteria Tedesca feels very now: genuine, grounded and thoughtful. If you haven’t been, you’ll want to go.

Design statement

Tedesca sprang from a handwritten manifesto of chef Brigitte Hafner – imagined in detail a decade ago, awaiting the right time and site. At the crest of a valley on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, Tedesca Osteria became reality, located across a trio of weatherboard buildings that became the restaurant and its agriturismo accommodation, Graceburn. On a modest budget, a rich soul was returned to the ageing buildings, embedding the ethos of the restaurant over the course of a year. It was a process led by attention to the details of human comfort – light, sound and the visceral warmth of natural materials. Tedesca is about doing more with less and understanding our relationship with the world. Cooking happens in the dining space, with the purpose-built wood oven and grill supported by three “altars” to the Tedesca dining philosophy – kitchen bench, bar and private dining table, all masterfully crafted from jet black ancient river redgum.

Osteria Tedesca
1175 Mornington-Flinders Road
Red Hill, Victoria
tedesca.com.au

Cox Architecture
167 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, Victoria
coxarchitecture.com.au

Project team
Patrick Ness, William Cassell.

See the whole gallery of images at the Eat Drink Design Awards website.

The 2020 Eat Drink Design Awards are organized by Architecture Media and supported by supporting partners Chandon Australia, Latitude and Roca.

The Eat Drink Design Awards are endorsed by the Australian Institute of Architects and the Design Institute of Australia.