After almost two decades in Southeast Asia, Ryan Clift is moving to the Clare Valley to lead a new restaurant at Skillogalee Estate
The project will bring the progressive cooking that defined Tippling Club into direct contact with regional growers, a kitchen garden and the fire at the centre of the kitchen.
Ryan Clift built his reputation through experimentation. At Tippling Club in Singapore, food and cocktails were developed together through a research-led kitchen and an approach that regularly pushed beyond the conventions of fine dining.
The restaurant closed at the end of 2024 after more than 16 years. His next kitchen will be shaped by a very different setting.
Ryan is returning to Australia to lead a new 40-seat restaurant at Skillogalee Estate, with the opening planned for 2027. Speaking to Broadsheet about the project, he described the contrast between the laboratory-style kitchen he built in Singapore and the restaurant now taking shape in the Clare Valley.
Technical cooking will remain, but it will sit alongside a wood-fired hearth, regional produce and closer relationships with the people growing the food.
A career shaped in Australia
Ryan was born in Wiltshire, England, and began working in kitchens as a teenager. After gaining experience in the UK and Europe, he moved to Australia in 1999 and spent more than eight years at Vue de Monde, including time as head chef under Shannon Bennett.
He has described that period as the point where his career properly began. It placed him inside a kitchen helping to define a more ambitious style of Australian fine dining, while giving him room to develop his own approach.
In 2008, Ryan moved to Singapore and opened Tippling Club. The restaurant paired progressive food with an equally serious cocktail program, building menus around experimentation and the relationship between what was served on the plate and in the glass.
That willingness to question familiar formats became central to Ryan’s work. Even as Tippling Club earned international recognition, it remained driven by testing ideas rather than settling into a fixed identity.
From laboratory to land
The kitchen at Skillogalee will not be a rejection of that past. It will be an opportunity to apply the same curiosity in a setting where the relationship between the restaurant and its ingredients can be more immediate.
Ryan told Broadsheet that the semi-open kitchen is being designed around a custom island stove and wood-fired hearth, with the pass extending towards the dining room. The food will remain progressive, but the equipment and location will create space for a more direct style of cooking.
That balance is where the project becomes interesting. Regional fine dining can be caught between rustic expectations and the pressure to reproduce a city tasting menu in the country, but Skillogalee has the chance to do neither.
Ryan can draw on more than three decades of technical experience while allowing the Clare Valley to influence the menu. The restaurant’s identity will depend not only on how the ingredients are handled, but on the relationships built with the people producing them.
Building around the Clare Valley
Ryan plans to spend the lead-up to the opening meeting growers, understanding the region’s seasons and helping to develop the estate’s kitchen garden.
That work gives the kitchen the opportunity to respond to what is available rather than treating provenance as a list of names printed on the menu. The Clare Valley already offers a strong foundation through its wine, farming and established food culture.
For a chef who has spent much of his career in international cities, the challenge will be turning that access into a dining experience that feels specific to the region rather than imported from somewhere else.
With around 40 seats, the dining room is being designed as a focused destination, supported by the wider Skillogalee estate and its long connection to Clare Valley wine.
A different model for fine dining
The project raises a wider question about what experienced chefs can build outside Australia’s major cities. Regional restaurants offer access to growers, a stronger sense of place and the opportunity to shape the full guest experience.
They also bring operational challenges, from staffing and supply to convincing diners that the journey is worthwhile. Ryan has made clear that the move is not about lowering his ambition or slowing the pace.
The aim is to build a restaurant capable of standing among South Australia’s strongest, while allowing the food and guest experience to lead the conversation.
That ambition makes the contrast with Tippling Club more meaningful. Ryan is moving from one of Asia’s busiest dining cities to a vineyard in regional South Australia, but he is not leaving progressive fine dining behind.
He is testing what it can become when technical knowledge, fire and regional produce are brought closer together. For Skillogalee, that could be the foundation of a restaurant shaped not only by the chef leading it, but by the place around it.
