When Clare Falzon was cheffing at Hentley Farm Restaurant, she’d drive past the old Marananga Primary School building daily on the way to work, and often imagined opening an eatery on the abandoned site. “I always thought, ‘What a great place to have a restaurant’. But it was a dream – you imagine it and then you get on with your life,” she tells Broadsheet.
Cut to late 2023, when Falzon departed Hentley Farm and connected with Renee de Saxe, Luke Edwards, Kirsty Kingsley and Nick Radford, who together own regional art space Wonderground Gallery, a wine label of the same name, plus Mirus Vineyards. The dynamic foursome is now turning that schoolhouse (empty since the mid-1990s) into a new food and arts precinct, a little like Seppeltsfield around the corner. “It’s very serendipitous,” says Falzon.
Since leaving the fine dining restaurant where she made her name, Falzon has spent the past year working around Victoria, her home state of New South Wales, and SA, including residencies at Loc and Bellwether Wines, honing her approach and clarifying her vision for the kind of restaurant she wants to lead. A stint at Annie Smithers’s acclaimed regional Victorian restaurant Du Fermier was particularly motivational.
“It’s very personable, it’s Annie and Bronnie and their personalities, and both of them care so much about what they do. They want to look after people, but they also know it’s important to look after themselves as well. Plus, Annie is so excited about food and restaurants, it’s infectious. That really inspired me, like, ‘Yeah, I want to do it like this’,” says Falzon.
“[It was] also travelling around, working in different places and cooking different food – food that’s pulled back from what I was cooking at Hentley, which is probably what I prefer cooking. It’s a lot more accessible – it’s nice when you cook food and more people can try it and you can engage and connect with them.”
The result is Staguni (seasons in Maltese), which will home in on Mediterranean cooking and flavours from Falzon’s Maltese heritage, with strong influence from the island’s neighbours Sicily, North Africa and the Middle East. Expect lots of local seafood, like a vitello tonnato-inspired white anchovy mayo with lightly seared beef, topped with toasted sunflower seeds and sweet currants. Another dish she’s excited about is zucchini flowers fried in crispy tapioca batter, tossed in sumac and drizzled with honey, then swiped through yoghurt.
The restaurant will sit in the original 1922 brick schoolhouse, with a cosy fireplace and the classroom’s original blackboard, which will be used to scrawl the day’s snack specials or wines by the glass. Falzon describes the space as “intimate, comfortable and warm”, inspired by Parisian bistros and French countryside dining rooms.
Despite her year cooking across Australia – and a career that’s included stints in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, at high-profile restaurants such as Nomad and Gordon Ramsay’s Maze and Petrus – the Barossa’s tight community and deep connection to produce and producers drew her home.
“There’s a lot of support and it’s a lot more connected here … and that’s really invigorating,” she says. “You’re not going to cook in a basement every day. I’m living and engaging in the community, which is really nice. Opportunities came up interstate for me, but every time I came back to the Barossa and saw the little hills and the sunset … this is where I want to be.”
Staguni will open in spring at 457 Seppeltsfield Road, Marananga.
