Lake House: Restaurant review

The pioneering, creative behemoth that is Daylesford's Lake House has added another string to its restaurant-hotel-spa-cooking school bow – a 38-acre farm, orchard and olive grove. It's a definitive "put your money where your mouth is" move from a destination restaurant that's been championing the regional and seasonal for more than three decades. The menu seems energised with the opportunity, bristling with ingredients picked mere hours and kilometres away, perhaps a cocotte of farm vegetables and an exquisite pithivier finished with a Pyengana cheese sauce, or Jerusalem artichokes filled with fresh curd, accompanied by a puddle of artichoke velouté and topped with tiny flowers and leaves. Elsewhere there might be dumplings stuffed with Lakes Entrance bugs and shark-fin melon served in a broth of pork and lion's mane mushroom, petite ice-cream cones filled with fig leaf ice-cream, or chestnut gnocchi sharing a bowl with foraged mushrooms. It's food perfectly in sync with the serene light-filled dining room, beautifully measured service and weighty wine list offering artisan locals alongside French masters. Put it all together and you get one of Australia's true culinary treasures.

Phone:
(03) 5348 3329

Bookings:
Bookings essential

Chef(s):
Alla Wolf-Tasker & Brendan Walsh