Hearth by Moonacres — Restaurant in Bowral

On a visit to Ngununggala at Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales we discovered Hearth by Moonacres.

We already knew of the Moonacres cafe in Robertson and of their breads and organic veges. I am not a great fan of their Robertson restaurant for reasons I may explain in a separate review. However Hearth brings all of their expertise together.

Facing onto a beautifully restored historic building which I believe was the old dairy, Hearth is peaceful and pleasant place to share company and interesting food.

Visiting for a late lunch, we did not want slabs of meat! The menu on the day we visited about a month ago was limited but turnout to provide fascinating choices.

I was drawn to the Salad Mentonnaise which is Moonacres fennel, cous cous, orange, cabbage, almonds and orange dressing. This turned out to be one of the most interesting and flavoursome salads I can recall enjoying in recent times. The chef excelled himself with this combination.

Again, the wine list was short featuring a variety of regions with one French wine.

Being a coffee nut, often my test of a cafe/restaurant is whether they can make a good macchiato. What a surprise! An excellent macchiato adhering to the spirit of what a macchiato should be.

Finally, they achieved the balance of friendly, informed and intelligent service without being intrusive.

Whether you are a local or visiting the Southern Highlands a detour to the relatively new gallery space on the Retford Park National Trust estate and Hearth by Moonacres is likely to be a highlight of...

I would have rated this cafe so much higher but alas there are too many things lacking for me to do so:

Before ordering we were told they had run out of cups for regular sized coffee and were serving in latte cups. Wow! Had their dishwasher broken down or had they not ordered enough cups?

Coffee was slow to be delivered and when it was it was only 1 of the 2 ordered. The very young girl came back with another coffee eventually and said she had only charged us for 1 coffee. Ok she made an error and from the price we paid I conceded and paid for the 2nd coffee before leaving. BTW the coffee was ok but maybe a little bit strong.

We ordered a croissant and a pastry. They were delivered to the table without any cutlery; no napkins and they had not been heated. I suspect that is what made them taste pretty ordinary.

The table we sat at had not been cleared properly. The bottle of water from the previous customer was still on the table, furthermore we were not provided glasses and water as we noted other tables had.

All in all, this was a disappointing experience that I hope for the owner's sake is not the normal.

Our money is too hard earned to give them another go in the future which is a shame because the location...

Absolutely horrible cafe. Note- Ngununggula is excellent and worth many visits. At this cafe, we were exceptionally neglected by the inept cafe staff. We are easy-going, but he buffoons 'serving' us elevated our frustrations exponentially. We were never greeted or even acknowledged, had to get our own menus, find a table, had several increasingly frustrated interactions with the staff and increasingly forceful checks our finally ordered food was on the way, after 40 minutes of painful hunger, I was forgotten and the waiter told me he understood that that 'must be frustrating' and they were 'busy' with several vacant reserved tables. We had no choice but to leave (both still hungry) and upon expressing this 'frustration' the main offending watier did not even apologise- We just got attitude.

We were at this place Aug'25. AVOID this mess until you have checked that the staff or management have changed or magically exponentially improved.

We are passionate supporters of Ngununggula, and continue to love the gallery. Shame the so-called cafe makes patrons leave...