Pokolbin · Hunter Valley
EXP.
Delicious & interactive dining. Twenty-eight seats. One open flame.
Two Chef’s Hats — Regional Restaurant of the Year, SMH Good Food Guide 2026
The restaurant
The Hunter Valley’s most awarded dining room is not on a vineyard. It’s at a 28-seat chef’s counter, where every course is cooked, poured and finished in front of you.
Chef Frank Fawkner opened EXP. in 2015. A decade on, it holds two chef’s hats and was named Regional Restaurant of the Year — the Good Food Guide’s highest honour outside the capitals.
From the fire
Cooked over flame, finished at your table
Iron, smoke and Hunter charcoal. Every course of the Chef’s EXP.erience passes through fire on its way to you.
From the sea
Sydney Rock Oysters
Shucked to order from Shanes Seafood, dressed with native finger lime and Yarra Valley caviar.
From the hearth
House brioche, cultured butter
Provenance Lancer flour, Hunter Belle dairy — baked for each service, torn while it steams.
Interactive dining
Finished in front of you
Sauces poured, coals stoked, plates built at the pass. Twenty-eight seats, and every one watches the kitchen work.
Native & wild
Finger lime, bush honey, wild fungi
Native produce from Naway Yila Buradja, honey from The Humble Hive, mushrooms from Mother Fungus. The Hunter, plated.
The finale
Sweet, smoke, repeat
Daintree chocolate and orchard fruit — a dessert course that ends the film but not the evening.
Accolades
Awarded. Repeatedly.
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Regional Restaurant of the Year
SMH Good Food Guide · 2026
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Two Chef’s Hats
SMH Good Food Guide · 2026
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Top 100 Restaurants in Australia
Gourmet Traveller · 2025
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Best Destination Dining — Finalist
Gourmet Traveller · 2025
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#1 Fine Dining Restaurant in Australia
TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice, Best of the Best · 2025
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NSW Top 25 Restaurants
Gourmet Traveller · 2024
- Adina Estate
- Binnie Beef
- Daintree Estates
- Hunter Belle Dairy Co.
- Josh the Truffle Guy
- Little Hill Farm
- Mother Fungus Mushrooms
- Naway Yila Buradja
- Nebo Farm
- Newcastle Greens
- Provenance Lancer Flour
- Red Gate Farm
- Shanes Seafood
- Sprocket Roasters
- The Humble Hive Collective
- Yarra Valley Caviar
- Maxwell
- Margan
- First Creek
- Thomas Wines
- De Iuliis
- Mount Pleasant Wines
Sixteen producers. Six winemakers. Five artisans. Meet our collaborators
Reservations
Twenty-eight seats. Four nights.
Dinner Friday to Monday, lunch Saturday. 2188 Broke Road, Pokolbin — in the heart of Hunter Valley wine country.