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The Castlemaine resturant that couldn't exist anywhere else

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The Nugget
November 07, 2025

★ The Castlemaine restaurant that couldn’t exist anywhere else ★

Bar Midland co-owners, Loudon Cooper and Alex Marano.

When Bar Midland was announced as a two-time Age Good Food Guide Hat winner this year — and awarded Best Drinks List in Victoria — chef Alex Marano was stunned.

"There's definitely imposter syndrome with this sort of stuff," Alex says.

"I can't believe we go to the Good Food Guide Awards every year. I can't believe I'm sitting next to people who taught me how to cook.

“I can’t believe that we get ranked 15.5 (out of 20), and a restaurant I worked with has either gone bankrupt or has lost their hat and I’m the one remaining. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

For a restaurant dedicated to sustainability that doesn't stock imported wine, serve steak, or use sugar, the mainstream recognition feels hecking modern.

“Our philosophy is all Victorian beverage and food,” Alex says. “It’s all either organic, biodynamic or regeneratively farmed.”

Bar Midland’s menu is built around abundance and constraint: indigenous foods, introduced wild animals, and weeds.

“We don’t use farmed animals,” Alex says.

“For the small amount of protein we use, it’s going to be venison, hare, or rabbit. We’ve got an incredible number of invasive species that cause so much grief, and they can be turned into something delicious.”

The same logic shapes the beverage menu that earned Bar Midland the Best Drinks List award. Best drinks in allll of Victoria, people. Hat tip to Bar Midland’s co-owner and bevvie curator, Loudon Cooper.

Bar Midland serves a creative, all-Victorian selection of drinks that includes violet liqueur, Castlemaine-made pastis (props to Charles), and low-alcohol ferments brewed in-house. Thanks to the state’s many microclimates, the wines varieties are absurdly diverse.

Alex grows sugar beet to use as a sweetener, along with local honey or fruit sugars.

Necessity has become Bar Midland’s creative fuel. The restaurant grows almost all its fruit and vegetables.

“I’m predicting 96 per cent this summer,” he says. “In winter, we don’t do very well. We get maybe 50 to 60 per cent."

Late summer is go-time. Alex works all hours to bottle and store all the juice his team can squeeze out of the garden.

“We have communal working bees,” Alex says. “Everyone takes some home. Other times, the kitchen staff who work with us, Tom and Ana, take more time prepping food while I’m mulching sugar beet in shorts outside, because it’s like, 38 degrees.”

Even the waste finds a second life. “We’re not throwing any polystyrene or soft plastics in the bin,” he says. “We wash and dry our soft plastics and find somewhere for them to go. Loudon’s pottery studio uses venison bones and mussel shells. We burn them and he turns them into glazes for our pots.”

His approach to food and business grew from watching how farming shapes the land. When his uncle converted the family farm to organic in 2001, Alex saw how quickly the soil came back to life. Later, working on an organic farm in Italy, he noticed the contrast even more sharply.

“I was just blown away at how diverse, how healthy the soil was,” he says.

“Then I looked at the surrounding farms, they were all conventional. The soil was dead. Everything was being kept alive with chemicals. It looked bright green and perfect on paper, but the soil was gone. For me, it’s very straightforward. It’s about sustaining the soil and the land for the future.”

Care and renewal runs through the whole caper, from the way Bar Midland treats its ingredients to the way his family folds into the work.

“My mum makes the bread for the restaurant because I can’t, because I am not patient and she’s incredibly good at it,” Alex says.

“Dad delivers the bread. It’s too idyllic. Too sweet. I feel so blessed.”

Growing up in Castlemaine, Alex absorbed that sense of community early.

“I went to school in Bendigo for a few years and ended up moving back to Castlemaine and finished school at Castlemaine Secondary College,” he says.

“That was incredibly important for me because of the connection to community. Even back then, it was considerably more diverse than other country towns.

"I’ve watched so many of my friends move back here to have families for a reason. We’re very lucky. There’s a hot rod festival one weekend, an organic farming festival the next, and then a banjo jamboree. And none of us really butt heads.”

Upwards of 40 per cent of Bar Midland's customers are locals.

“For what’s probably considered a tourist restaurant, we’re really proud of that. And that’s because a restaurant like this is only going to work in Castlemaine. Castlemaine gets it."

The small-town support comes with a flip side. One can feel rather exposed in a small community.

“Sometimes in restaurants, people aren’t happy,” Alex says.

“I definitely sometimes shy my way around the street because I’m like, 'Oh, I remember that person didn’t like that thing I cooked for them four years ago.'

"That’s a small portion of what I really feel, which is generally pride and the connection to so many people for so many different things.”

As for where he sees Bar Midland in five years, it's up to the garden.

“The garden will dictate where we go. I feel like the restaurant’s a great platform for me to say, there’s wild goat and wild boar that we still can’t eat in Victoria. These are the sorts of things that I think the restaurant can help highlight. The restaurant is a small part of what a bigger picture could be.”

❀ See you at the Pride Picnic ❀

Where else can you see a Pride Dog Show, bootscoot with none other than Country Struts AND watch a gender affirming fashion show?

The Pride Picnic at the Goods Shed this Saturday is the place to be. From 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM. Note, it’s been moved inside to avoid the rain.

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

𖥔 TALK TO MOI PLOISE 𖥔

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