With its delicious food, millennial pink-coloured chairs and colourful wallpaper, The Botanica Vaucluse at the luxury Mark Moran Vaucluse retirement village and aged care development has food bloggers and Instagram influencers coming to dine among the residents.

Head chef Perry Hill sources most of his ingredients from the restaurant’s 65-acre working permaculture farm Jamberoo Valley, two hours’ south of Sydney, as well as the village’s kitchen garden and other local suppliers – and it’s struck a chord with young and old.

“Social media is a really powerful and can be used in an amazing way, and is bringing a whole lot of people that years ago might not have been that interested in food,” he said.

Dishes include sweet potato gnocchi with goat’s cheese, pesto and baby leeks, fried octopus with finger lime and a coriander mojo verde dressing, and a blueberry, rhubarb and goat’s cheese meringue tart for dessert.

“We’re 100% paddock to plate. I’m always about using fantastic suppliers, growers and farmers, cheesemakers and that sort of thing,” Mr Hill said.

He started work at London’s River Café in the early 90’s, before becoming the executive chef at the Boathouse at Blackwattle Bay. Now he’s enjoying running the show at Botanica – and says it’s not the younger diners who are ordering his more out-there dishes.

“The people that live in the retirement village that come to the restaurant, they choose the most interesting dishes. They’re quite adventurous,” he said.