James Spreadbury remembers Tom Campbell when he was a “little surfer dude from down south”. The Adelaide hospo talents go way back. But they’ve been busy on their own journeys in the years since. Spreadbury went to Copenhagen to work at revolutionary restaurant Noma, where he was service director for 12 years, becoming a partner in the business in 2017. (He left in 2022, moving back to Adelaide to be near family.)
Campbell, meanwhile, has gone from that little surfer dude to one of Adelaide’s best and brightest cooks, working stints at Africola and Leroy in London before making his mark at The Summertown Aristologist as co-head chef alongside Ethan Eadie. He and Spreadbury had joked for some time about starting something together, but after linking up again in Japan last year, those plans were made concrete.
“Tom and I spent a day walking the entirety of Kyoto drinking coffee, drinking wine and looking at ceramics … that was the day we committed to each other and my brother that we wanted to do something together,” says Spreadbury, whose brother Tim moved back to Adelaide around the same time after clocking time at Le Doyenne, an applauded fine diner, farm and guesthouse on the grounds of Château de Saint-Vrain on the outskirts of Paris, and got to work on his own farm in the Adelaide Hills.
“He’s also grown up in hospitality but in more recent years found a passion and groove for wanting to cultivate and grow,” says Spreadbury. “I wanted to support that and focus on that idea of cooking from a certain place and setting up those creative boundaries by constraining yourself as much as possible to cooking from one spot, which is something I find very inspiring.”
The concept solidified further when Loc’s Olivia Moore came into the fold, following Campbell’s chef residency at her east end wine bar, where Spreadbury has also been doing shifts. The trio all share a similar approach to food, wine and hospitality, in part influenced by their collective experiences working across Europe, and a deep respect for produce and provenance.
“It was always pretty easy from the off, just in terms of the style of food we appreciate, on top of where it’s coming from,” says Moore. “We all very simply love the same wine and the same food, which is hard to specifically categorise, but it was this unspoken thing. All of us have a deep love and connection to Europe broadly … and I think that influences a lot of the style of what we want to eat and drink and as well as provide for other people.”
The trio are starting out with a series of intimate pop-up dinners this weekend at Presqil, Tim’s aforementioned farm in Forest Range. “Obviously I come from a higher-end, curated dining background,” says Spreadbury. “I’ve done that for years and I love and appreciate the art of executing experiences on such a level. But I also love the grounded feeling of offering … more rustic, refined countryside cooking.”
Among plots of baby carrots, mixed zucchinis, Armenian cucumber, red Tropea onions, rocket, parsley and basil, 20 diners (per day) will sit down to a veg-forward menu of Campbell’s cooking, driven by the produce harvested that morning and supplemented with proteins like locally caught squid and wild marron plucked from the dams on the farm. The experience will start in the garden with fresh crudités and a Manon cider made with apples grown on-site, back when it was an apple orchard, before diners move to the packing shed for a five-course meal.
“Tom’s a very produce-sensitive young chef,” says Spreadbury. “His values are in the right place, he’s humble, he likes to go fishing and foraging and cure his own meats, he’s very hands-on and has a connection to nature, and that reflects in the purity of his cooking.”
The food will be matched with “purely made wines we love, from people we love,” says Spreadbury. That includes drops from local producer Gemini and Tasmania’s R D’meure, plus stuff Spreadbury and Moore have collected from Europe.
“Right now with the current restaurant climate, it’s difficult, the idea of … investing so much into a permanent space,” says Spreadbury. “Not that we don’t want to do that, but as a starting point we really liked the idea of capturing a moment in time by creating a temporary space.”
Summer dining at the farm is on February 9, 10 and 11 at Presqil Farm in Forest Range in the Adelaide Hills/Permangk Country. Tickets are available online.
