Craig Lunn is the head chef of Ten Minutes by Tractor in Main Ridge, a 2-hat restaurant in The Age Good Food Guide 2026
Craig Lunn arrived at Ten Minutes by Tractor with a different brief from many chefs starting a new role. The restaurant was already established, highly regarded and carrying two hats.
Craig took over as head chef in late 2025 after moving to Australia from the UK. Rather than rebuilding the restaurant, he stepped into a kitchen operating at a high level and began bringing his own cooking to it.
His career had already taken him through Michelin-starred restaurants, international kitchens and head chef roles before he arrived on the Mornington Peninsula.
Starting young
Craig grew up in Wiltshire in the south-west of England and began cooking professionally at 16 as an apprentice at The Bath Priory under Michael Caines.
He later travelled to Doha to work with Alain Ducasse before returning to the UK and spending two years at the three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London.
Roles in Copenhagen followed before Craig returned to Wiltshire and joined Niall Keating at Whatley Manor as senior sous chef.
The kitchens were different, but the expectations around technique, detail and consistency were high. In 2020, Craig moved into roles where he had greater responsibility for shaping the food.
Leading his own kitchens
After leaving Whatley Manor, Craig became head chef at a rural restaurant during the pandemic, where his cooking became more experimental and produce-led.
He later became head chef at Lunar at the World of Wedgwood in Staffordshire. Niall Keating oversaw the restaurant, with Craig running the kitchen day to day.
The role gave him responsibility for menus built around local suppliers while drawing on techniques and influences gathered through his career.
In 2024, Craig left the UK looking for a new challenge. Australia became the next step.
Finding the Mornington Peninsula
The landscape around Ten Minutes by Tractor felt familiar.
Craig has compared the Mornington Peninsula with the south-west of England, where he grew up around farmland and a strong agricultural culture. On the Peninsula, growers, farmers, winemakers and producers have quickly become part of the way he approaches the restaurant.
Ten Minutes by Tractor's regenerative 10X Farm sits next to the restaurant and supplies the kitchen with vegetables, herbs and edible flowers.
Craig has also spent time going directly to producers beyond the estate, learning more about how ingredients are grown before deciding how they fit into the menu.
Following an ingredient to the source
The bread service is a good example.
Craig initially visited Jason Cotter at Tuerong Farm to collect flour samples. The visit turned into more than two hours walking through fields of wheat and barley and learning about the grain and the person growing it.
Back in the kitchen, Craig developed the restaurant's sourdough using two Tuerong Farm flours and an established starter.
It is a small part of the menu, but the process reflects his approach on the Peninsula. Understanding where an ingredient comes from has become part of deciding what to do with it.
Cooking with the wine
Ten Minutes by Tractor also gives Craig another element to work with: the vineyards.
Rather than developing a dish and considering the pairing afterwards, Craig works with head sommelier Noah Rozenfeld to think about food and wine together from the beginning.
Understanding the vineyards and individual sites has become part of menu development. A dish can be shaped with a particular wine, season or part of the Peninsula in mind rather than treated as a separate component.
Craig's early cooking at Ten Minutes by Tractor brings that approach together with the technical background built across Britain, Europe and the Middle East.
Holding the standard
Taking over an established two-hat restaurant brings a different pressure from opening somewhere new.
There is already a standard, a team and an audience familiar with the restaurant. Craig has to develop his own cooking while retaining the connection to produce, wine and place that has long defined Ten Minutes by Tractor.
His arrival has not changed those foundations. The difference is the perspective he brings to them.
Years spent in highly structured kitchens now sit alongside a closer relationship with growers, vineyards and ingredients on the Mornington Peninsula.
What two hats mean here
Ten Minutes by Tractor's 2 hats in The Age Good Food Guide 2026 recognise an established restaurant operating at a high level.
Craig inherited that standard when he took over the kitchen.
His task now is to build on it, bringing his own experience to the restaurant while becoming increasingly connected to the produce, vineyards and people around it.
