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To describe Annie Smithers as accomplished is an understatement. She’s a force of nature: overseeing an expansive farm, authoring books, writing for The Saturday Paper, and somehow finding time to shape one of the most revered dining experiences in regional Victoria.
To this day, she still does all the cooking at Du Fermier – from baking baguettes in the morning to offering a menu du jour that features veggies from her own kitchen garden (picked on the day!), along with meats and poultry from the local area. Just ten minutes from Trentham, Smithers’ small farm and home, Babbington Park, is where she grows her own food. The culmination of a career that includes formative years as an apprentice to Stephanie Alexander and head chef at Daylesford’s Lake House, her approach to cooking is rooted in a deep respect for the farm-to-table philosophy.
Du Fermier is the place where it all comes together. It’s a charming and rustic-looking restaurant with weathered floorboards and cute little knick-knacks dotted about the dining room. Decorating the shelves alongside my table, I spy stacks of beautiful ceramics, lovely books (one of them titled Recipes for a Kinder Life), bottles of chablis and jars of jam I want to take home with me. The table is adorned with a vase of fragrant roses – a sentimental and romantic countryside touch.
While my dining partner and I sip on Saint Damien’s Le Blanc from the Cote du Rhone, two petite hors d'oeuvre are brought to our table. Slices of Smithers’ housemade bread have been topped with sleek folds of fatty jambon that we find almost bacon-y, until we realise that the delicious smokiness is from the charred chunk of garden zucchini underneath. Tarted up with crumble of Dreaming Goat cheese, it’s a sharp and delicious bite to commence proceedings.
A wow moment comes when we’re served our glasses of A&C Ainsworth’s Rose of Cabernet – the best rosé I think I’ve ever tried in my life (and I’m not usually a rosé lady). We immediately note it down so we can buy a bottle to take home. The by-the-glass wine list, described as “an ever-changing offering to compliment Annie’s menu”, is a snapshot of mainly French and Victorian drops, and a highlight of the afternoon. But let’s get back to the food.
Our next course is a sprightly housemade pasta made from the farm’s eggs. A texturally flawless linguine has been tossed with the freshest broad beans I’ve ever tasted, toasted pine nuts and fragrant parsley oil, and scattered with briny ricotta salata curls. Twirled all together in a forkful, the sunny, green flavours evoke all the splendour of springtime. It’s the sort of dish your best friend would whip up for you in a crisis, (well, if your best friend was the best cook you knew and understood how to comfort you immediately).
There are all sorts of fancy ways you can enjoy duck across the state, but Smithers’ showstopping take on a duck l’orange is supreme. Served with a tangy marmalade, each tender piece of the Great Ocean Road duck is so good it’s hypnotising – the intense jellied fat under the skin, the wonderful dry-age character, the juiciness of the thigh meat. Incredible duck fat potatoes and young turnips – harvested at their peak – add hearty substance to the dish, while a splay of string beans lend crunch.
The sweet end to our meal brings about many more sighs of pleasure, from the wedge of Brillat-Savarin cheese (the soft-ripened triple cream cheese to crown them all) served with bread, to the surprisingly delicious loganberries peppering our dessert.
But the highlight of Du Fermier, for me, is actually the vegetables. Smithers’ ultra-local produce exudes just-plucked levels of freshness; it’s as if you can taste the sweetness and complexity down to each individual unit of fibre. And though nobody can deny the hearty pleasures of animal products like jambon, cheese and duck (especially when prepared with such love and natural wisdom), it’s the charred zucchini, velvety broad beans, turnips and gradient-hued green snaps that have restored my city-wearied spirit to life.
The heartbeat of Du Fermier is Smithers’ passion for locally-sourced, honest food, and we leave with a taste of it in our hands: two small jars of hand-crafted herbes de provence salt.
“Eating at Du Fermier is a little like eating at Annie’s house”, the restaurant shares on its website. Well, humble as it may be, it’s a breathtaking operation. We can’t help but feel privileged to step into the world where Smithers’ work, life and love seamlessly interweave.