The ingredients are perfect: a beautifully renovated bakery in a bucolic country town; an Alan Scott oven; a mad keen baker; his brother and a Japanese, French-trained pastry chef. The pastries are seriously sumptuous and the bread needs to be eaten to be believed.

Touted as the best regional cafe in the state and country, the Berry Sourdough Bakery & Café is not only rewarding for the baking brothers but the region as a whole.

When the cafe opened on the verdant, dairy farm-rich south coast of NSW in 2003, it marked the evolution of Berry from doilies, scones and a promenade of the homeware shops to a more refined, confident and upmarket country manor destination.

Joost the baker and his brother Jelle began the bakery because they were “sick of the crappy white fluffy stuff” and hoped that others, like them, “just wanted a decent loaf of bread.”

The addition of Fumico (their Japanese, French-trained pastry chef) has the country weekender customers drooling. The croissants are said to be the greatest in the country.

The cafe is a startling whitewashed building with a lovely umbrella shaded verandah and a bustling bakery/eatery inside. Sitting on the verandah with a fantastic coffee, amazing pastry or brunch among the lingering smells of a great bake is a weekend paper-reading session that delivers.

It’s the ultimate in fine relaxed country breakfast and lunching, and it’s not open for dinner (it is a bakery after all). Driving through Berry without stopping for a coffee and a treat is like a vegetarian eating at Rockpool Bar & Grill – a waste of everyone’s time.

Did you know? Australian Alan Scott is recognised as the world’s master oven builder, The NY Times obituary 5 Feb 2009 stated his designs allowed “bakers to turn out bread with luxuriously moist interiors and crisp crusts.”

Please note that since this review was published the Berry Sourdough Cafe serves dinner.

What did Berry do before Jelle and Joost came to town? Not only is their range of sourdough bread, pastries and tarts the best in the region by a country mile, their breakfast and lunch are a must for any passer-by.

This reinvigorated silo space, complete with an open loft where flour is now stored, has been revamped with new leather banquettes and plenty of seating inside and out. The warm, yeasty smell of baking sourdough makes it impossible to leave without sitting down for a satisfying meal.

Try rich scrambled eggs with chorizo, or a light goat’s cheese omelette with cherry tomatoes, served with the signature bread. The ever-changing lunch menu features local produce, and can be as fresh and light as gnocchi with tomatoes, ricotta and peas, or substantial bistro fare such as sirloin with cafe de paris butter and fries.

To finish, or indeed for afternoon tea, nothing compares to the glorious chocolate espresso cake.

Score 14/20

Hours: Breakfast Wed—Sun 8-11.30am; Lunch Wed—Sun 11.30am-3pm

Bill: Breakfast $5—$14.50, Lunch $15—$22 D $9; 10% surcharge on Sundays & public holidays

Cards: V MC Eftpos

Wine: BYO (corkage $5 a bottle)

Chefs: Glenn Parkes & Simon Edwards

Owners: Jelle & Joost Hilkemeijer

Seats: 52; wheelchair access; outdoor seating

Child friendly: Kids’ meals; highchairs; toys

And… check the fridge for house-made dips to spread on your sourdough

Please note that since this review was published the Berry Sourdough Cafe serves dinner.

If human cloning becomes possible, we’d nominate Joost and Jelle Hilkemeijer as first candidates because every country town deserves a sourdough bakery as wonderful as this.

Come early (but not too early, because the brioche might still be in the wood-fired oven) for divine croissants, pastries, scrolls, mini-pizzas and tarts. One bite explains why they sell out so quickly.

On weekends, the front verandah is packed with brunchers munching fruit toast over great coffee, or perhaps a goat’s cheese omelette.

Lunch options are homely, rustic and boldly flavoured, from fine duck rillettes to roast onion, fetta, olive and pesto pizzetta. The bouillabaisse sings of the sea; however, veal saltimbocca was a little overwhelmed by its lemon sauce. Chocolate espresso cake is wickedly opulent, its excess spurred on by warm chocolate sauce. If you can’t have the luscious brioche bread and butter pudding because the chef has left early, grab a takeaway version for home.

Score 13/20

Hours: Breakfast Wed-Sun 8-11.30am; Lunch Wed-Sun 11.30am-3pm

Bill: Breakfast $5-$13, Lunch $12-$22 D $10; 10% surcharge on Sundays & public holidays

Cards: V MC Eftpos

Wine: BYO (corkage $4.40 per bottle)

Chef Glenn Parkes

Owners: Jelle & Joost Hilkemeijer

Seats: 45; wheelchair access; outdoor seating

Child friendly: Highchairs

And… great breads to take home, plus gourmet and organic goodies, too

Please note that since this review was published the Berry Sourdough Cafe serves dinner.

Sometimes it pays to have children who wake you at dawn. That way, if you’re holidaying on the NSW South Coast near Berry, you can hot foot it to the Berry Wood-fired Sourdough Bakery (just off the main drag) to be first in the queue for crusty loaves, buttery croissants and light-as-air brioche, still warm from the oven.

About the 100 Best Holiday Discoveries 2008

We have crunched the destinations, audited our outgoings and we are ready to present to you, our shareholders. Here it is, the first ever T+L Annual Report.

Each year Travel + Leisure Australia + New Zealand’s peripatetic editors, writers and photographers travel many thousands of kilometres around the world in search of the best travel experiences. To mark the third anniversary of the Australasian edition of T+L we present our opinionated, discursive choice of our 100 best destinations, discoveries, moments and more from our own travels in the past year.

Bright, beautiful and bucolic, the town of Berry could have been built by a movie director wanting to create an idyllic and historic country setting.

In the real-life Berry story, locals stroll along its picturesque main street, some clad in moleskins and RM Williams, nodding at neighbours as they make their rounds to the butcher, the boutique bakery and any number of clothes and homeware shops.

I know this, as I’ve accompanied Berry friends on their Saturday morning walks and have been amazed at the number of people they stop and chat to, asking after camellias and arranging get-togethers at their country homes. I’ve visited the little South Coast town a dozen times in recent years, watching the country capers and driven back to Sydney with more than a touch of envy for my mates who made the change.

Berry is blessed: it sits in rolling green hills that only lush dairy country can manifest, a stone’s throw from the coast and within an easy drive of six wineries. An interesting community of artists, actors, hobby farmers, providores, garden-lovers and a clutch of well-heeled retirees from Sydney mix with folk that have lived in this pretty patch of the Shoalhaven for generations.

Berry’s main street — a short section of the Princes Hwy known as Queen St — must hold some sort of record for the biggest concentration of antique, home- ware, craft and gift shops in NSW. Only a person who is tired of shopping (with apologies to Samuel Johnson) would fail to be drawn into Bedroom Bliss or Bountiful Of Berry for a look; I never fail to return to Sydney without a trinket or two.

While homewares are everywhere, there’s also a profusion of food shops, which are loved by the locals and are day-tripper perfect, especially if you have kids in tow. Continuing the alliterative theme is The Berry Bon Bon, a sweet shop that has everything from Belgian chocolate and fudge to Rocky Road made daily on the premises, lollipops and old- fashioned musk sticks. And in the enticing Old Creamery Lane complex (a precinct dating back to 1895) is The Treat Factory, which makes its chocolate in an old dairy and sells an array of sauces, chutneys, tapenades and lollies including cobbers.

A real favourite with locals is the Berry Woodfired Sourdough Bakery, off the main drag in Prince Alfred St. The loaves are hand-crafted (no moulding machines here) and baked in a brick oven in a restored building that was the town’s original bakery.

Berry, however, is not all about food, touristy teashops and scatter cushions. The scenery, particularly on a spring day, is picture book perfect, even though it’s a real working landscape. You need only drive a kilometre out of town to be struck by the beauty of verdant fields dotted with daisies and cows dozing under trees near babbling brooks, horses in fields, hills — many planted with vines these days — and the disused white concrete silos topped with red roofs that date back 80 years or more and were used by dairy farmers to store cattle feed in winter.

For an unforgettable view over the entire Shoalhaven region and the ocean, take the 15 minute drive up to the top of Woodhill Mountain Rd, park the car and then set out on a sometimes steep, 90-minute round-trip walk to Drawing Room Rocks. Towering 600m above sea level, the “rocks” are huge chunks of the sandstone escarpment that have been shaped into amazing tables and chair formations by centuries, nay eons, of winds. If it’s not too blowy, you can sit on the stone chairs, some positioned precariously close to the edge, and eat a packed lunch for a picnic with a difference.