By Shamsiya Hussainpoor
The Australian Good Food Guide (AGFG) has named Sassafras’s King Henry’s restaurant in it’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards.
The Australian Good Food Guide is designed as an essential navigational and rating accomplice, and it has been acknowledged as Australia’s most comprehensive restaurant, accommodation and travel authority encompassing not only for major metropolitan areas but many of the smaller towns that lie in between.
Every year the AGFG examiners carefully inspect thousands of establishments and other places of interest for inclusion in their publication.
The ‘King Henry’s restaurant’ best known for its famous braised beef cheek, slow-cooked for 12 hours, served on parsnip purée, with broccolini, parsnip crisps and red wine has been operating under its new owners for the last six years.
The Sassafras restaurant is set on five acres with a large deck overlooking beautiful gardens, and is known to be one of the most popular dining destinations in the Yarra Valley – it’s also one of the oldest food venues in the Dandenongs.
The restaurant was originally an old guesthouse dating back to 1902, but it’s been operating as a tea house since the early 1950s.
The Patch resident David Johnson is not only a local in the Dandenongs but also the restaurant’s head chef, and he’s been in the hospitality industry for the past 45 years.
Mr Johnson said the staff were very excited about the award.
“What it means to the restaurant and to the team involved is the recognition of effort, both the owners and the staff have a high standard that we’re trying to keep, and it’s difficult,” the head chef said.
“I’ve noticed a lot of restaurants have dropped their game a little bit, but we haven’t, and I think that’s a great success – I attribute it to Ross and Mary (the owners) whose leadership and standards imparted to the whole team.”
“Since I took over [as head-chef] about a year ago, we’ve had a transformation, and a lot of learning has been done, Michelle (previous head-chef) has passed on a lot of her knowledge about the place, I’ve ensured to keep that going.”
He said proper training for the staff and managers has been a major factor in their success today.
Despite the challenges many businesses in the hospitality industry have been faced with, Mr Johnson said their restaurant is keeping well.
“We seem to be doing a lot better than a lot of other people at the moment with the crisis of living things, we haven’t really put up our prices, and we’ve tried to give really good value and quality for what we’ve got, and we seem to be edging ahead,” he said.
According to King Henry’s head chef, the venue gets its produce locally, he said they try to use all Australian products but that’s not always possible.
“Our meats come from a few different places, including a butcher in Upper Ferntree Gully, our dry goods come from Cadell and Sealane – who have been operating in the Hills for an extended period of time.”
Mr Johnson said the nomination would help raise awareness of all restaurants in the Dandenong Ranges, not just King Henry’s restaurant.
“It’s an amazing feeling to see all of our hard work is having an effect,” he said.
