Wine dinners can be a bit hit and miss. You know the format: you rock up at a set time, get seated on a long table of total strangers, and hope you theoretically become fast friends over a shared love of Shiraz. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s a pick-n-mix of awkward silences or someone’s uncle who “knows a lot about wine.”
Bridgeview Hotel in Willoughby is doing it differently. Better known to regulars as “The Bridgey” has launched Bridgey & Barrel, a new monthly dining series celebrating exceptional wines, thoughtfully paired menus and the stories behind every bottle. And the format is one that caught me off guard.
Wine Dinner with no Assigned Strangers
There is a rough guide to arrival time. I am not rushed in the door at a set hour with a room full of people I have never met. Nor want to be intimidated by.
Second surprise: my dining and drinking buddy for the night, Sue, and I are seated at our own table. Just us. No forced mingling, no polite small talk with strangers about their crypto portfolio. We catch up properly, taste the wines at our own pace, and talk about what’s in the glass and the food rather than small talking with someone we’ve just met. It’s a small structural change, but it reframes the whole evening. I do love wine dinners, but this is special because its an un-wine-dinner.
Meet Bradly, Our Sommelier for the Night and Chef Rob
Bridgey & Barrel is held monthly every second Thursday in the hotel’s Dining Room already home to an extensive wine list for $89pp, ensuring no two evenings are the same. On opening night no one from the vineyard is in the room. Which for me is a shame as I do love to meet the vineyard team. Instead, the job falls to Bradly, a Bridgeview’s front of house who’s spent serious time studying wine and steps up as sommelier for the evening. Bradly works the room solo, giving one-on-one service and talking through each wine as it lands where it’s from, what it’s doing, why it’s paired the way it is. It’s more personal. Behind the scenes Bradly and Chef Rob to build the menu backwards from the wines, rather than the more common approach of picking wines to match a set menu. Each dish is designed in collaboration.
Tyrrell’s Wine Dinner
Sue and I are at the first of these and its Tyrrell’s Wines, Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, out of Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley. It’s a fitting way to kick things off a guided tasting through the history, craftsmanship and family legacy behind one of the country’s most iconic wine producers.
To start, a pair of contrasting bites: pickled Australian crab and pumpkin tart with dashi gel and shiso leaf, then its followed by a winter black truffle, jamon and raclette croquette. Poured against these is an NV Sparkling Brut which is clean, easy and has the champagne blend of chardonnay and pinot noir. It is an elegant wine. Sue and I notice that they have a Tommy’s Margarita on the specials board so decide to kick off with one each, which is great. I do prefer a chilli marg whenever I can get it.
The entree are Japanese scallops with a pear and hazelnut salad, plus radicchio and saffron onions, its matched with the 2023 Special Release Fiano. I love Fiano. It’s a lighter, more textural course, and the Fiano’s got enough weight to sit alongside the scallops.
The mains step things up: Sue has the confit duck leg with fondant potato, celeriac puree, a silverbeet, raisin and pine nut salad, and a thyme jus. Which is perfectly cooked balancing rich and savoury in exactly the places the 2023 Estate Shiraz needs it to be, with the raisin and pine nut salad doing quiet work to bridge the fruit in the glass with the fruit on the plate. I opt for a non meat salmon main, the skin is cracker like whilst the flesh is still softly cooked to perfection. We order a few extra sides. Rob’s famous brussel sprouts which are always amazing plus some fries
The night finishes with a “Willoughby” mess mango, passionfruit curd, biscuit crumbs, lemon myrtle cream and vanilla pavlova paired with a Late Picked Verdelho. A properly Australian way to finish, lemon myrtle and passionfruit doing a lot of the heavy lifting against the Verdelho’s sweetness.
What’s Coming Next
The series continues on 8 October with local wine merchant First Ridge, bringing its world-class Italian varietal wines grown exclusively in its Mudgee vineyard to the Dining Room. That is then followed by Audrey Wilkinson who takes over on 12 November, highlighting contemporary and modern-style wines from its cellar door in the Hunter Valley, before Clonakilla, Canberra (famous for its Shiraz Voingnier) closes out the year on 10 December. One of Australia’s most acclaimed cool-climate labels
The Verdict
What are we ADDICTED to? Wine dinners live or die on two things: who you’re sitting with, and whether the food talks to the wine instead of just sharing a table with it. Bridgey & Barrel solves the first problem by letting you choose your own seating and your own company, and solves the second by building the menu around the pours rather than the other way around.
What do we need to be more ADDICTED? We would love to hear from some one at the winery. Not just to talk about the wine (a good sommelier can do that) but to share the stories of the winery, personalities which only come with proximity, time and intimacy. That’s what makes it special rather than simply a wine pairing.
The Bridgeview Hotel, 580 Willoughby Rd, Willoughby, NSW 2068
When: Every second Thursday of the month, 7pm, Cost: $89pp
Bookings: Limited seats available, bookings essential. September bookings are now open via It’s Your Table.