Where to Eat Dinner in Yarragon and Warragul: A Local's Guide
- Kristy Plumridge
- Aug 26
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 27
There are four places I send guests for dinner from The Ridge House in Yarragon South. Messmates Dining and Hogget Kitchen, both in Warragul, are hatted restaurants you book ahead for. The Yarragon Hotel and the Travellers Rest Hotel in Thorpdale are country pubs you can walk into. On a Sunday or Monday night, only one of the four is serving, which is the single most useful thing I can tell you before you plan your stay.
Guests ask me two completely different questions about dinner, sometimes in the same email. The first is where to go for the best of our region's produce, the meal the whole stay gets built around. The second is where to find a good local pub for a casual dinner and a hearty meal, especially on the nights when everything else is shut.
Here is my answer to both.
The dinner worth planning your stay around
Messmates Dining, Warragul
I am writing this a few days after spending Saturday night at Messmates with six Melbourne friends for my birthday. It is my go-to, and I encourage every guest to book ahead and go.
There are two ways to do Messmates, and they suit completely different nights. If you want a quick vino and a good meal, book a seat at the bar. That is Neil and me on a Tuesday: a pasta of the day, a glass of vino, the open kitchen to watch, and home before the fire has gone down.
If you have the whole night, take a table and order the Chef's Menu. Let Jodie and Michael take you through the freshest of what is in season here and spare yourself the food envy that comes with everyone ordering separately. It runs snacks, sides and a main, plus Jodie's house-baked sourdough focaccia with cultured butter. Check the chalkboard for the night's menu.
The photos below are from my birthday dinner. The half-roasted chicken with jalapeño jus was the main that night, and I was relieved when they came round asking who wanted more bread, because I had already considered the alternative. Picking up the plate and licking it is a considerably worse look in a hatted restaurant. They pour a lot of local winemakers, and we drank Entropy's cool, crisp Riesling, grown on the vineyard that sits in front of Hogget Kitchen.
Snacks from the Chef's Menu at Messmates Dining in Warragul, Gippsland Roast chicken with jalapeno jus at Messmates Dining House-baked sourdough focaccia with cultured butter at Messmates Dining
My birthday dinner at Messmates. I have lost count of how many times I have eaten here since they opened three years ago, and it has never once been less than outstanding. Bringing Melbourne friends is the best part, watching them work out what this region can actually do, and planning when to come back here!
Jodie Odrowaz and Michael Clarke met in the kitchen at Vue de Monde and went on to cook together in London at The Square and at Gordon Ramsay's Petrus, both Michelin starred. They own and run Messmates with Jodie's brother Chris Odrowaz and his wife Jess. They have held a Good Food Guide Chef's Hat since 2023 and took Regional Restaurant of the Year, and they cook with heirloom produce from Jodie and Chris's parents' farm and, when it is in season, from Green Hills Farm next door to us.
Say Kristy and Neil from The Ridge House sent you.
15 Palmerston Street, Warragul VIC 3820 Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm Tel: 03 5622 2952 Book a table at Messmates Dining
Hogget Kitchen, Warragul
Trevor Perkins cooks on the vineyard where Bill Downie and Ryan Ponsford of Entropy Wines grow their fruit. Bill is our neighbour down the road in Yarragon South, so this is about as close to the source as you can get without standing in the rows yourself. You can taste a selection from both makers here.
There is no à la carte. Instead there are seasonal degustation menus built around the best of Gippsland's produce and producers, starting at $70 for two courses and running to $150 for six. Arrive hungry and choose your own adventure. Trevor's passion is charcuterie, so I always pick a menu long enough that one of his boards turns up somewhere along the way.
If you find something of Ryan's you love, we keep some of his wines in the pantry at The Ridge House. Handy for later that night, or for taking home when you would rather not think about it in the morning.
6 Farrington Close, Warragul VIC 3820 Lunch Thursday to Sunday from 12pm · Dinner Thursday to Saturday from 6pm Tel: 03 5623 2211 Book a table at Hogget Kitchen
Where to go for a good Gippsland pub dinner
Yarragon Hotel
Ten minutes down the hill, in the middle of Yarragon village, the Yarragon Hotel has been trading since 1926 and has everything you want in a country pub. Front bar, beer garden, and a small dining room worth booking if there are a few of you. If you are here on a Friday, get down for raffle night between 5pm and 7.30pm. Good fun with the locals, and the money goes to our CFA, the footy club and the bowls club.
What they do beautifully is Gippsland beef. The scotch fillet comes with creamy mashed potato, seasonal greens and a kilpatrick-style jus, and it is the reason I stop pretending I am going to order something lighter. Neil goes the steak sandwich, also scotch fillet, with caramelised onion, beetroot relish and a side of steakhouse chips. In all these years he has never offered me a bite.
They do takeaway pizza too. Ring ahead or order online, drive the ten minutes down, then back up the hill. Open a bottle from our pantry, get into your trackies and flop on the couch. No dress code up here.
105 Princes Highway, Yarragon VIC 3823 Every day 11am-9.30pm, Fri & Sat until 11pm · Takeaway seven nights 5.30pm-8pm Tel: 03 5634 2202 Book a table at the Yarragon Hotel
Travellers Rest Hotel, Thorpdale
A grand art deco pub 25 minutes away in the middle of potato country. There has been a pub on this corner since 1908, and the building you see now went up in 1937 and has been lovingly restored. The menu is classic gastropub, and what chef Mitch does better than anyone is the thing Thorpdale is famous for.
My order is the pot pie: braised beef in red wine under a cheesy Thorpdale potato mash. Neil goes old school and gets the bangers and mash for exactly the same reason, which tells you everything about how we divide the labour of research.
Mitch also makes his own gnocchi, potatoes and a little flour and a great deal of patience, in a few different versions. Mine is the Mediterranean, a rich tomato sauce spiked with kalamata olives and feta. Look at the chef's special board before you commit, because it will probably change your mind. The kids menu is mini versions of the adult dishes, $10 to $14.
2 Station Street, Thorpdale VIC 3835 Thursday 12pm to 8pm · Friday and Saturday 12pm to 10pm · Sunday lunch until 3pm · Closed Monday to Wednesday Tel: 03 5634 6240 Book a table at the Travellers Rest Hotel
Sunday and Monday, when the country closes
Messmates is shut both nights. Hogget serves no dinner either night. Travellers Rest closes at 3pm on Sunday and does not open again until Thursday.
This is not bad luck, it is how country hospitality works. These places are run by locals who need a night off too.
So the Yarragon Hotel is your sit-down dinner, open every night until 9.30pm. And there is that takeaway pizza, seven nights between 5.30pm and 8pm, which is the line I would underline if you only remember one thing from this post.
If you cannot face leaving the ridge at all, the Spud Shed is open seven days from 7am to 7pm and the fridge is full of ready-to-heat meals. Mine is a soup with a few thick slices of the sourdough from your breakfast provisions, toasted. Dinner solved in ten minutes and nobody has to change out of what they are wearing.
There is no Uber, but we have your driver covered
If the plan involves tasting your way through a Gippsland wine list, sort the driving before you sort the wine. Hailing a taxi on the night out here is optimistic at best.
What we have is better, if you plan ahead. Two local drivers with Baw Baw Taxis know the road up to The Ridge House, which counts for a great deal on a gravel driveway in the dark. Rudi drives nights and Robyn drives days. Call one of them a few days out rather than at 9pm from the car park at Hogget.
Baw Baw Taxis, pre-booking recommended Rudi (nights): 0419 544 961 Robyn (days): 0409 315 305
Or I can cook for you
When I am at the property, I cook a farm dinner and leave it in the fridge, ready for whichever night suits you. It needs to be pre-ordered at least seven days before you arrive, and I confirm at the time of booking whether I will be here, because I will not promise it if I cannot deliver it.
Two courses, vegetarian, from the farm and from producers within half an hour of us. Garlic, tomato and basil sauce made with our own garlic, local pasta, parmesan, a green salad, then my orchard apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream. $45 per person.
Nobody has ever regretted having it waiting.
Coming soon, and I am watching closely
The old Yarragon Ale House has been taken over by a group of young Gippsland hospitality people and will reopen as Pent & Barrel, a taproom and brewery. The buzz locally is that it will become the brew house to go to in this part of the world. I am quietly hoping food is part of it, because that would be another reason to come and eat well here, and only ten minutes down the road. I will update this post the moment I know more, which will almost certainly be the moment I have been and tried it myself.
Do I have a potato problem?
Reading back through this, I appear to have a serious thing for potatoes. Fortunately I live in the one part of Victoria where that is a reasonable position to hold. If you want to take some home, the Spud Shed is ten minutes from The Ridge House towards Trafalgar and sells them by the bag. Gippy Golds are the ones I would put in your boot.
A crate of freshly harvested potatoes at the Spud Shed, ten minutes from The Ridge House Locally grown Thorpdale potatoes on display at the Spud Shed in Gippsland Bags of Gippy Gold potatoes for sale at the Spud Shed near Yarragon, Gippsland
Gippy Golds and the rest of the Thorpdale crop at the Spud Shed, ten minutes towards Trafalgar.
Open seven days (7am-7pm), and they sell them by the 10kg and 5kg bags.
The fires are laid, the valley is going pink, and dinner is the only question left. You now have four answers to it, and a fifth if you let me cook.
Book your stay at theridgehouse.com.au
Continue Exploring Gippsland
Kristy's Gippsland Guide: Restaurants, cellar doors, markets and day trips across the region
A weekend without an itinerary: what to do when you have deliberately planned nothing
Stargazing at The Ridge House: the other reason to eat early and get home
