Stillwater

Stillwater is a fine-dining restaurant in Ritchies Mill, an old flour mill where Cataract Gorge meets the river in Launceston, Tasmania. Rooms called Stillwater Seven fill the floors above it.

The mill went up in the 1840s and, besides grinding flour and oats, supplied the town with fresh water until 1857. A fire in the 1940s took its roof, and the empty building served for decades as a grain store. Artists revived it in the late 1970s as the Ritchies Mill Art Centre, and Miller's Cottage beside it became a café run by one of the later founders. Stillwater opened in the mill in October 2000; co-founder Don Cameron's double mushroom custard was among its early dishes.

Three co-owners run it: executive chef Craig Will, who was born in Launceston, Bianca Welsh, who leads the floor and the hotel, and the sommelier James Welsh, a Len Evans Scholar. Their wine list sits in the Hall of Fame of the Australian Wine List Awards and leans on Tasmanian growers, especially those of the Tamar Valley, such as Clover Hill and Stefano Lubiana. Each year the Good Food Guide judged regional Australia, Stillwater received a chef's hat, the only restaurant in northern Tasmania to appear in it.

Will cooks with island produce, mixing Japanese, Italian and French ideas in a single dish. His early signature paired Southern Rock Lobster with mandarin peel purée and celery jelly. Wagyu rump cap comes with local oyster mushrooms and black truffle butter, and Lenah wallaby with barbecued brassicas and freekeh. Beef arrives from Cape Grim and Robbins Island, and seafood from Kyeema Seafoods. Old beams and the mill's industrial frame remain in the room, which looks over the kanamaluka, the Tamar River.