“That is Mother Nature giving us the finger” laughs Alla Wolf-Tasker, doyenne of the food industry and one of the key people that helped to make Daylesford a foodie destination. She is of course talking about the snow that fell gently but persistently last night and this morning. I do have “pinch me” moments, quite often in fact and this is one of them. Mr NQN and I have checked into the Lake House in Daylesford, a luxurious hotel which is famous for its restaurant as much as its view and lodgings.
Alla Wolf-Tasker
Alla’s daughter Larissa heads up the marketing here at The Lake House and she warns “Mum can talk under cement so I’ll have to stop her”. Alla along with her artist husband Allan, have built what was a single building fronted by a swamp into a luxury foodie and travel destination (her mother wept when she saw the property saying “You’re building a restaurant where?”). She also set up Daylesford and Macedon Produce which is a collective of artisan producers and farmers that allow them to truly stake claim to the word “local”. Things are not 100 miles away, they’re as far away as a few kilometres. Now The Lake House have five organic farms within 10 kms that supply to them and the Daylesford Macedon Producers collective (DMP) has 126 members.
But it wasn’t always that easy.
Allan Wolf-Tasker’s paintings
Alla recalls where it all started. She was studying cooking in France and the places that resonated with her were the French countryside restaurants where they really had a sense of place. That is “You knew that you were dining in a country restaurant and not a city restaurant…We’re talking 2 and 3 Michelin star country restaurants. They had farmers that were selling them vegetables so fresh that they were being delivered in the morning with dew still on them”. So her dream became to open up a country restaurant. However Australian farming was not like European farming and everything back then was monoculture so a farmer grew only one type of food.
When she came back to Australia she told her husband Allan that she wanted to open up a country restaurant. “Luckily he said ‘why not?’ instead of giving me reasons why it wasn’t a good idea which numbered plenty. We had no business or marketing plan” she remembers “I dreamed of a discerning clientele, rosy cheeked farmers and white suited waiters. But it was sh*t when we opened” she said with her characteristic honesty.
It took four years to build the first building and when they first opened it was only open Friday to Sunday as they had to keep their jobs in Melbourne to help support the business. “People just wanted scones and toasted sandwiches” she recalls with a grimace. “I put on a prix fixe meal for $24 a head which was never heard of here. I had shiraz glazed squab on the menu”. Despite this resistance from the people, she persisted. I ask her whether the customer’s desire for scones and toasted sandwiches put her off and she says “No I’m stubborn”. “Crazy” interjects Larissa. Alla adds “I’m not going to glamourise it, there were plate throwing incidents. We had to do things like send laundry back to Melbourne because there was no-one to do it here so on a Sunday night we’d take off all of the linen”.
Larissa Wolf-Tasker
There were also huge issues with growers supplying food and she recalls putting ads two weeks in a row for farmers to supply local produce. At the end of the second week a single bag of potatoes were left at their doorstep. But it’s not just having farmers selling to locals, they needed to create a market for the farmers to do this.
Now things have changed and now there is a farmer’s market every week. And for Alla, even though she has has organic food, local always trumps organic. If given a choice between an organic product from overseas or a non organic local product, she’ll always choose the local product.
So what is for dinner tonight? “We aren’t harvesting anything at the moment” Alla explains. Their altitude and the colder climate means that they harvest a little later than everyone else. She tells us that she is excited that some of the farmers are growing her some black and watermelon radishes as well as amaranth. We leave with a signed copy of Alla’s gorgeous hard cover book “The Lake House” which gives a fascinating background story to The Lake House.
Suite at The Lake House
Mini bar goodies
We follow the trail of wooden cockatoos and our room is facing the lake which sparkles right outside. It is furnished in a modern style with a large outdoor deck, Lake House goodies in the mini bar (we particularly liked the fruit and nut biscotti which was chock full of plump apricots and pistachios), Natio products, a lovely mud soap, heated tile floors (oh bliss!) and a huge spa bath.
Mr NQN takes a nap and I do a bit of work and before you know it, it is dinner time! We take the short walk from our room to the main building and are greeted with a warm welcome. We are shown to our table by Tom who looks after us for the evening and the room is large with a stunning view of the lake.
The menu has a painting by Allan Wolf-Tasker of Alla showing her asleep holding a whisk and cradling a bowl and is called “Rousseau’s Sleeping Chef” as a testament to how devoted she is to cooking and how she dreams it. An eight course degustation is $130 and $80 extra for matching wines or three courses a la carte is $98.
Inside the menu is a note from Alla about the spring produce and explains how spring is a slightly slower season here because of the cooler weather. Farms plant then rather than harvest in this region and she explains that spring Lamb is six weeks later here than in less cool climate areas. While Mr NQN and I are figuring out what to order Alla breezes in and sits next to me on the banquette and says to Tom “They only had 15 minutes for me before so I’m going to talk now!”.
With two hats in The Age Good Food Guide this year, we’re excited to try the cuisine. I’m torn between the degustation but then I also see the Gaytime dessert “Oh no problem, we’ll swap it around for you if you’d like. How much can you eat? I don’t want to kill you! We can just keep sending out the food” she says. “We don’t have to feed our geese” she says laughing, “they love the leftovers and they’ll eat themselves into a foie gras state by themselves!”. We decide on the degustation for Mr NQN and a la carte for me with my a la carte based on Alla’s recommendations. Mr NQN chuckles at the note on the menu “If you would prefer some simpler fare, please speak to your waiter. The Kitchen will be happy to oblige”.
Amuse Bouche (degustation course)
We start with our first course, a scallop cooked on the shell with a creamy fennel sauce and delicate slices of poached fennel in a vivid saffron which gives it that honeyed flavour and the fennel a delicate aniseed flavour. It’s a great way to start the meal.
And no meal is complete without starting it off with some bubbly-the NV Lake House Sparkling Rose.
Tuna – air dried and tartare, aioli, apple, salmon roe (degustation course)
Mr NQN loves his tuna tartare with sweet poached apple. There is a tiny piece of air dried tuna on top which is similar to a tuna prosiutto and some lovely little pops from the salmon roe.
Five Tastes from the Sea
I do love tasting plates and this one has five separate seafood flavours on it. Our waitress tells us that we can start eating it in any order. I start with the Coffin Bay oyster with Nam Jin which adds punchiness and aroma to the creamy oyster, a fantastic little cup with two Kinkawooka mussels, “Mariniere” which is a creamy white wine soup, a spoonful of diced scallops and black bean ceviche with juicy scallops and black bean which gives it a Chinese flavour, and tuna sashimi wrapped around a crunchy Asian salad which is then wrapped around a paper thin layer of pickled cucumber in a sesame sauce and lastly, a crunchy Crystal Bay Prawn in tempura which is served plunged into a lightly spicy chilli aioli.
Salt cod tortellini, broad beans, Manchego, pancetta (degustation course)
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