The Artisan Farmer — Restaurant in Nabiac

CELIACS AND FOOD ALLERGIES BEWARE - We had phoned ahead to ascertain if level of advertised ‘GF’ menu items would be suitable for our child who has celiac disease. Friendly lady on the phone quickly assured me they cater for celiacs, stating they take care to make a fresh toasty by wrapping the gluten free ham and cheese with GF bread, inside baking paper, clean set of gloves and GF designated tongs. (Sounded good until....) When having arrived and started ordering, I was told by the register staff that the restaurant was too busy to prepare GF food unless it was ordered from the menu (ie: an adult burger etc - more expensive item. But my 7yo wouldn’t have eaten any if their very limited 3 adult meal options.) When I explained that I was told on the phone it would be no problem to prepare the toasty from scratch her response was ‘I don’t know who you spoke to but we don’t do that when it’s busy and we can’t guarantee our GF items are GF, there are traces of gluten in everything because we just swap out the standard gluten bread for GF bread and it’s touched the same things.’ It was extremely hard for me to then get clarification from her if they actually take an existing sandwich with gluten bread and just replace the bread with GF bread using the filling that was previously in contact with the initial unsafe gluten bread. I tried to ask another way- Q1: ‘For Celiacs, are you able to prepare a fresh sandwich in a seperate area?’ Ans1: ‘NO’ Q2: Are you able to use a clean pair of gloves and clean tongs?’ Ans2: ‘No, we’re too busy for that. Q3: ‘Can you please check with the people making the food if they can do that because I was told on the phone that you can do that. She disappeared and returned to say ‘we can do that.’. 🤦🏼‍♀️ No apology though. I was still very nervous this person was diligent & confident enough for the job, so asked if she could please make a note on the order that it was a ‘celiac meal’. She then asked me to spell Celiac. At that stage my child got very scared that she was about to be fed a gluten meal and asked if we could drive somewhere else. TERRIBLE SERVICE! The manager wasn’t much better tbh. She started explaining to me that they don’t guarantee GF because they bake all the bread in-house on the same equipment. In shock & me wondering what they actually understand about gluten at all I query ‘Do you bake the gluten free bread on the same equipment as your gluten bread?!’ And she finally tells me ‘oh, for gluten free bread we order it in.’🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ I take a deep breath, full of stress and ask her again, ‘you did put our order down as a celiac toasty on gluten-free bread, yes?’. She says ‘Yes’. We still don’t know how they prepared our child’s food and will have to just watch for symptoms and hope we don’t end up with a 6wk recovery. The whole experience, apart from being extremely unnecessarily stressful and traumatic especially for my 7yo, was full of rudeness from the first person, including eye-rolling and smirking. Unprofessional incompetent service and inconsistent information. Such a shame, I really wanted to like this place & for it to become our new regular pit stop. Overpriced, dirty table, poor service, untrained rude staff, dirty toilets, no soap or toilet paper and when asked for soap soap the manager said they had run out, ‘still waiting for the...

If you hate eating fast food on long drives north, you’re going to like The Artisan Farmer in Nabiac (well as long as you eat beef). It’s a large-scale paddock-to-plate initiative by Peter Doyle of Wallamba River Wagyu set on the very property he raises his full-blood Japanese cattle. By cutting out middle people and providing a finished product directly to the customer, Doyle is able to produce “honest food at a reasonable price on the side of the highway.”

When I walked in the door I was a bit put off by the scale of the operation. “Artisan” to me is usually synonymous with small, however here being “big” means they’re able to use the whole animal in a very productive way. The menu is cleverly designed to use the prime cuts from the front end of the animal, with the master butcher and bakery converting the rest of the carcass into beef jerky, pastrami, chorizo and wagyu sausage rolls. With an ordering queue going all the way back to the front door, I wasn’t convinced the kitchen would do a good job on hot dishes, so I ordered The Artisan Farmer charcuterie platter ($38) to share. More fool me: the food coming out of the busy kitchen actually looked well-presented and very consistent. My resulting collection of rare roast wagyu beef, free-range smoked ham, pastrami, house-made chorizo, brie, Cheddar cheese, hummus, cornichons, lavosh and sliced sourdough with butter on a huge wooden board was delicious, prompting me to purchase meat to take home from their onsite butcher-deli. A tasty cup of beef jus ($3) is a worthy dipping addition to any menu selection.

With the take-home wagyu burger patties I selected, I was impressed with the way the flavoursome intramuscular fat (rich in omega-3 fatty acids) rendered on the grill. The marbling is produced by feeding the cattle a morning grain supplement. As grain can upset their tummies, Doyle balances it with seaweed (a natural antacid) and probiotics. With transport stressful to cattle it also impressed me to see a business utilising the whole carcass grown on the very property I was eating it. The Artisan Farmer’s product store also offers many items from makers on the NSW Mid-North Coast. By keeping an eye on labelling we can reinforce that buying local is what visitors to the region...

What a welcome change from the standard highway fare of Macca’s and Hungry Jacks. The Artisan Farmer as far as I am aware, is the first of it’s kind at least in NSW to offer great freshly cooked food all sourced from paddock to the plate, great coffee, cakes and top quality produce to take on the road and even a beer of wine should you not be driving.

We’re locals and often go there for breakfast and lunch, it can get a little noisy when busy however the food and location more than compensate. This place was a long time in the planning and boy has it payed off, the owner/s should be very proud of such a massive undertaking, they have thought of literally everything. Theres’s plenty of parking for cars, cars with caravans and boats, Coaches and B Doubles not a single stone has been left unturned in the planning of this place.

Some people have complained that only card is accepted, but when you see this place when it gets busy you will understand the thinking behind the decision to go cashless. I for one am not in agreement for a cashless society however, with two registers running cards through the lines of people dissipate quickly. I can only imagine if cash was accepted there’d be people complaining about the long queues and having to wait to be served. The Artisan Farmer reminds me of when we were in Italy travelling on the road, there’s these petrol stops called AutoGrills where you can sit down to freshly cooked hot meals and on your way out buy blocks of cheese and salami and even wine.

So finally, if you’re travelling up or down the coast on the Pacific Highway M1 plan your trip so you can refresh and revitalise at the Artisan Farmer, you will not be disappointed unless of course Macca’s...