EXP. Restaurant — Restaurant in Pokolbin

EXP is cool, its experimental, its utterly focused on its location, the native flavours of the surrounding valley and your dining experienceWe went to E.X.P for the first time when it was at the Oakvale Winery Cellar door. I remember sitting in the old restaurant for the first time, being utterly transfixed by the food, the textures, the flavors. The experience simply wasn’t what I expected outside of a major metropolitan center.The restaurant moved to the Pokolbin village in 2020 where the Chef/Owner Frank Fawkner has very carefully created an E.X.Perience that includes not only his superb food, a decor in modern rustic, superb service, a chefs bar at which you can sit and look directly into the kitchen and a wine E.X.Perience curated by Harrison Plant.

Surrounding you are house and locally made jars of sauces, vinegars and relishes. The furniture, the plates and the cutlery are unique, locally made and crafted by local artizans. The feeling as you enter is friendly, welcoming and clearly with a focus on you, as the customer.

The entrance to E.X.P was originally a clothing shop, and the exterior really doesn't present the E.X.Perience you are about to be offered. As you enter, the restaurant is dominated by the long black stone bar fronted by tall, locally made leather seats for those customers lucky enough to get a seat at the bar. The other dominating feature is the completely open kitchen. Guests sitting at the bar are literally 18 inches from Frank and the team as they carefully prepare each dish.

The restaurant only offers a degustation / tasting menu which is constantly being changed and tweaked as new ingredients become available in the valley. The menu can almost be used as a food map of the Hunter Valley. Frank focuses on locally grown and locally made ingredients. Frank personally has a small farm, and he grows a lot of the produce used in the restaurant, particularly the rarer and hard to get items. To be clear, despite the appearance of a rustic country chic, nothing is out of place in E.X.P, every item, every ingredient is very carefully considered and placed with an attention to detail that is sublime. The food is modern, fun, light and incredibly tasty. Flavors and textures of traditional dishes are experimented with in a way that builds layer on layer of flavor, into something that is new and unexpected, yet familiar.

The duck ham is a great example of this. The dish is described as Duck Ham, your brain tells you that you are looking at a perfectly formed, miniature ham sandwich. What you are about to snaffle is a Red Gate Farm duck served on sourdough crumpet with red wine and grape chutney. This is not your grandma’s ham sandwich but will leave you craving more as much as your Grandmas did.

Each guest is greeted and sat by the superb front of house team, lead by Harrison Plant. The experience of being welcomed into the E.X.P family is genuine, warm and honest.

The meeting of food and wine in this restaurant elevates the great, to the truly sublime. Each wine pairing with each dish, complements, elevates and sometimes transforms the food. This is a place where food and wine are both stars and are truly brought together as a conversation.

Scoring 20/20

We use the Sydney Morning Herald Scoring system for consistency.

The score is based on multiple visits to the restaurant for many years.

10/10 points for food

Deliciousness, technique, complexity, quality of produce, balance, presentation, consistency, style, innovation, integrity.

5/5 points for hospitality

Attitude, friendliness, efficiency, pacing, attentiveness, professional skills, knowledge, COVID safety.

3/3 points for experience and setting

The "buzz" or "vibe", consistency, view, table spacing, noise levels, something extra (such as a kitchen garden or counter dining).

2/2 points for value

Is it worth it? I have chosen to return many times as one of my “go to” restaurants since 2015. I constantly recommend it to friends and colleagues...

Attached to Oakvale Winery, EXP. is a minimalist space that revolves around nature for both the white room’s decorative elements, the serving vessels, & what’s presented in and upon them. Pulling up on the banquette side of the chunky wooden table gives you a view of the long galley-style open kitchen. It’s framed by a mossy green organic wall above (the work of Bloodwood Botanica) & counter seats below. The latter provide guests with an uninterrupted view of the dishes owner/chef Frank Fawkner and his team are creating. Wine is reasonably priced with a list that extends beyond vineyard & region. We opt for the 2018 Stefano Lubiana 'Primavera' Chardonnay ($75) from Tasmania’s Derwent Valley, & get an elegant chardonnay that balances yellow nectarine & soft woody complexity.

In terms of food, while you can opt for the shorter EXP.osure ($85/person) menu, being first-time visitors, we dive upon the full EXP.erience ($110/person). Cleverly it begins with a flurry of snacks that shuts your stomach up & encourages you to relax about pacing. Scallop roe is turned into airy crackers you smear with house-made taramasalata. Creamy squares of golden haloumi are speared from a pond of black garlic, olive oil & lime with what you could be forgiven for calling the most pretentious fork of all time, until you discover it is itself a sculpture by Mark Aylward.

Glistening slices of duck ham are presented warm on toasted focaccia from Fawk Foods Kitchen & Bakery. Baking proves to be a bit of a highlight, with both a burnt brandy snap filled with fine chicken liver parfait & arguably the best sourdough crumpet of all time, plus great straight up bread eaten with house-cultured butter flavoured with native herbs & crunchy salt flakes.

Frothy Sebago potato & olive oil cream tangos with local pearl oyster mushrooms, umami powder, kelp powder, & skinless sour pickled cucumber slices. There’s something about this soup-like dish that reminds me of gazpacho, while still feeling unique (even to someone with an extensive restaurant history). Redgate Farm quail, from up the road in Raymond Terrace, is presented with zucchini ribbons, shiso mint, red plum pieces & puree. While this dish felt local & seasonal, I struggled to find a compelling thread uniting these ingredients on the plate.

The other thing I wasn’t quite sold on was the music – Australian Crawl, Dire Straits – just felt wholly inappropriate for the setting. The music is a good analogy for this restaurant - good, fun food presented in ways that are not always bound by the tyranny of good taste. Take the wagyu sausage roll as a prime example, presented on a log, it's served with a beef fat emulsion (a mayonnaise that tastes of beef fat). It’s meant as a companion to the wagyu beef sourced from nearby Scone. Soft and well-rested with plenty of flavour, on this plate the beef is presented with another collection of ingredients - charred fushimi peppers, juicy, acidic heirloom tomatoes and smoky baba ghanoush – again not overly unified, but all good fun to eat.

The best thing I put in my mouth at EXP. was the Sourdough Crumpet ($15 add-on). Made using a sourdough starter from the bakery, it’s served with honeycomb and Tarwin blue cheese that’s been whipped with cream, then scooped into a quenelle and dusted with shavings of frozen blue cheese.

The crumpet occupies my mind through ‘peaches & cream’ where the peaches are presented as sorbet, jam and puree, against cream and meringue mixed in liquid nitrogen. Local blueberries, bound up into a Swiss roll cake with buttermilk ice cream & a black sesame sable feels like overkill and makes me wish I’d stopped at the peaches.

Between the rose gummy bears and the Davidson plum biscuits that follow, you certainly feel like you get bang for your buck in these here parts. The staff are super-friendly too. Despite set menus & fine dining motifs, there's something down-to-earth &...

What a pleasant surprise EXP. turned out to be. We booked relatively last minute & managed to snag the last two seats of the evening. Lucky, given how intimate (read: small) the current space at Oakvale winery is.

As soon as we arrived we were put at ease by a warm, friendly waiter who showed us to our seats at the bar, where we could see all the action taking place in the kitchen. We opted for six courses + pairings & later chose to add the cheeses as a seventh course. I had food in my lungs by the time we left, but everything was so delicious & interesting it was hard to turn any of it down.

I find it difficult to succinctly describe what is so great about this place. The staff are knowledgeable & deliver the service I'd expect at a hatted restaurant, yet warm, genuine & friendly like your favourite local barista. The food is tasty & complex enough to be interesting & delight in its cleverness, without trying too hard & crossing the line into feeling contrived. Plenty of local/native ingredients, without feeling gimmicky. The wine pairings were oh so clever!

Final notes- great value for money. Seven courses for two people, including pairings for one of us was just over $300. Given the standard, the bill was a pleasant surprise. I also appreciated not being treated as an inconvenience for being pregnant. The chef & his team were very accommodating & this is not always the case with venues serving a set tasting menu. The vibe of the place was great. It felt like a relaxed, friendly local with a great buzz, serving food above it's pay grade.

I hope this place retains it's down to earth vibe & clever & tasty menu. We'll be back again...