First Look: The Team Behind Tasmania’s Van Bone Comes to WA With Bair Bones, a Winter Dinner Series

Like a good holiday romance, Bair Bones is fleeting, intimate and destined to become a powerful story for everyone involved.

The 14-person dinner series by husband-and-wife duo Laura and Tim Hardy kicked off last week. In 2020, the pair opened Van Bone, an adored 16-seater restaurant in the isolated Tasmanian coastal town of Marion Bay. It quickly earnt a reputation as one of the state’s best regional restaurants before closing in December 2024.

“It was an amazing experience and awesome to have a vision, see it through, and watch it become internationally recognised as something really amazing,” Laura says.

But after years of operating an all-consuming restaurant, their priorities shifted. “The burnout was real,” Laura says, with Tim adding they both “needed to breathe again after the gnarly restaurant life.”

In 2025, feeling accomplished and content – and with Laura 32 weeks pregnant with their son – the pair packed up “a car full of cookbooks and wine from the restaurant” and relocated to Margaret River.

Always interested in working at a winery, Tim found a natural connection with winemaker Robert Gherardi of Mr Barval Fine Wines. “The whole ethos of their winemaking aligns with how we think about things,” Tim says. “Minimum intervention, doing it yourself, cutting no corners.”

And while Tim worked in the vineyard and winery, Laura found herself building out a vegetable garden on the property. Clearly, the two couldn’t stop themselves working side-by-side again. Enter Bair Bones, a pop-up dining series running twice a month (on Friday and Saturday evenings) throughout winter. It’s 10 courses and serves just 14 guests per service.

The menu is thoughtful and firmly produce-led. Bitter garden leaves topped with shaved cured egg yolk and honey from the property are served alongside a soulful, hazy, effervescent house wine. Marron is served over smoking pine on hand-whittled skewers, while truffle escargot pastries are built to be dunked into liquid Cambray farmhouse gold cheese.

Each dish also includes plenty of lightly pickled elements, a hallmark of great farm-to-table dining, which aims to preserve the produce at its ripest.

The Hardys see Bair Bones as a gentle re-entry into hospitality. No permanent location (yet), just a deeply personal 10-course dinner series built around community, production and integrity. What happens at the end of winter remains undecided.

“I think it’s the beginning of something, for sure,” says Tim. “Who knows what that will be?”

Bair Bones will run from May to September 2026 at Mr Barval Fine Wines. It will run two nights a month, but won’t be running in July. Dates and bookings are available online.  Dinner costs $160 per person with a matched wine flight.

Bair Bones at Mr Barval Fine Wines

7087 Caves Road, Margaret River

0415 634 563

Hours:

Fri & Sat 5.45pm–9pm (approx.)

bairbones.com.au

@bair_bones