"An Australian icon where the beautiful rhythm of life
is emphasised and honoured."
— Luxury Travel Magazine
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Book your package Sunday – Thursday and receive a host of extras as we celebrate our 40th birthday.
Prices starting from $1055, tariff based on twin share.
"An Australian icon where the beautiful rhythm of life
is emphasised and honoured."
— Luxury Travel Magazine
Destination restaurant and retreat Lake House Daylesford is an icon 40 years in the making. As the beloved family business marks the milestone year, delicious discovers why it still embodies the very best in low-key Australian country luxury.
Sitting on the Lake House terrace in dappled sunlight now, watching ducks slide across Lake Daylesford, it’s hard to imagine what came before. When artist Allan and chef Alla Wolf-Tasker found the site in 1979, it was strangled with blackberries and car parts, the now-iconic ponds choked with scum. Today’s landscape of maples, silver birch and lush perennials was planted by hand, and has grown alongside the family business now led by Alla and her daughter Larissa Wolf-Tasker, along with Larissa’s husband Robin Wilson.
The child of Russian post-war migrants, who owned a cottage in Daylesford, Alla has the insatiable work ethic shared by so many second-generation migrants. But even she admits that those early years were gruelling.
“I wanted to emulate the great regional restaurants of France considered to be ‘worthy of a journey’,” she says. “I just had no idea how unrealistic that was, considering our lack of resources and where Australia was with food in those days. Allan, an artist who could thankfully design, draft and build, was enthralled with this idea of constructing something around that dream. Neither of us realised what a folly that dream really was.”
Juggling day jobs, Alla and Allan spent four years clearing and building, then finally running the restaurant. At the time, the now-fertile region didn’t offer a reliable supply of produce besides industrial potato crops – Alla would work in Melbourne all week, then drive up to join Allan, a tiny Larissa bumping around between boxes of market fruit and veggies in the back. To this day the squeak of styrofoam puts Larissa’s teeth on edge, Alla tells me.
Even when the doors opened, the concept of schlepping out to a regional restaurant was abstract to most diners. Guests would book over the kitchen phone and have directions posted out – Daylesford was then so far off the radar. But word of this audacious rural eatery soon spread. With no local lodgings to speak of, the ever-pragmatic Wolf-Taskers added some rooms for overnight stays… then a few more. And so it grew.
“We were always planning the next step – the next advancement in what we could offer our guests,” Alla says. “Lake House today is nothing like the little 45-seater my hugely talented husband built for me. We always moved ahead, drawing plans and diagrams of special things we saw when we travelled (usually sitting in little bars in France, Spain or Italy).”
The property that now flows down the hill has an organic feel; its rambling paths lead to dells of ferns and hydrangea beds under ivy-laced gums. This dreamlike place was the backdrop of Larissa’s childhood.
“I was always included and offered the opportunity to participate; to peel carrots, cut butter – there was always a job to do,” she says. By 14, she had her first official shift on the restaurant floor: “I was terrified, yet energised by the theatre of service and the opportunity to look after people.”
As with any relationship nurtured over decades, there has been heartache. While Larissa, Robin and Alla lead Lake House into a new decade, they grapple with the loss of Allan in 2022. His presence, and art, is still everywhere. The familial feeling is palpable throughout – several team members have stayed for decades, and a few are the children of former staff.
Looking back over the past 40 years, Alla credits every award and recognition for motivating them all to keep going. “The continued acknowledgement by all the lists that mattered to us, the continued awards… always kept us buoyed. And I have to say my own recognition from the industry I loved – despite the hard work and frequent heartache – kept me sustained and wanting to improve. The fact that we now still continue to win awards and acknowledgement – even after 40 years – is remarkable, and a testament to our desire to move on and continue to excel.”
Today, Lake House encompasses 33 suites and studios, as well as an infinity pool overlooking the lake, an awarded spa (where I have one of the best massages of my life) and the restaurant. My luxe Atrium Villa reveals a generous living room with high vaulted ceilings, deep plush sofas and art from the Wolf-Taskers’ personal collection, as well as a lavender-lined courtyard with a fire pit, and a large kitchen stocked with an apparently never-ending supply of fresh pastries.
And still, the Wolf-Taskers have found room to grow. In 2010, they transformed a 1940s cottage in Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens into Wombat Hill House, one of the town’s favourite cafes, and in the otherwise dark days of 2020, Dairy Flat Farm was born.
This 38-acre regenerative farm outside Daylesford has helped the business take
a giant leap towards being self-sustaining, providing everything from the meadow flowers in communal spaces to the fresh produce on the restaurant plates.
Farm manager Pedro Neves leads tours; the Brazilian expat emerges triumphant from greenhouses and garden beds with peppery radishes, an heirloom tomato or a rare herb for me to nibble on. An olive grove yields small-batch oils and a vineyard small-batch wines, while a new orchard of 300 heirloom trees is destined to produce cider.
The farm’s greatest surprise lies behind a towering box hedge: Dairy Flat Lodge. This grand house and its six suites can be booked together or separately; each individually styled room with a perfectly placed clawfoot tub, many with views of the stone-walled cottage garden (from which the in-house concierge plucks herbs to prepare included country breakfasts).
Dairy Flat Bake House is another passion project, where slow-fermented grains are coaxed into enough loaves and pastries to feed Lake House and Wombat Hill House. The calm space also hosts cooking classes. Across all these ventures, an assured hand is felt; everything bespoke, considered and charming.
When I join Alla for dinner that night, the welcoming team lead us to a carefully chosen table – tucked in a corner, with a perfect line of sight to the kitchen door. The delicate beauty of the food that emerges goes beyond foams or fussy plating; every dish is a piece of agrarian artwork on the plate.
Wafer-thin curls of new-season asparagus is draped around a seared pool of Bruny Island C2. A sculptural vacherin arrives with a mouthful of strawberry sorbet and a spray of elderflower from Dairy Flat’s hedgerows. With each course there’s an almost indiscernible nod of approval from Alla – at a particularly pleasing leaf, or a berry plucked fresh from the farm and placed just so.
“More than ever we believe that good food matters,” Larissa says. “We believe that good hospitality can be transformative. And that service as an ever-diminishing commodity is more important now than ever. It’s our hope that after a weekend at our house on the lake, guests leave nourished. So that’s what we’ll continue to focus on.”
At its core, Lake House is a love story, with all the joy and heartbreak that comes hand in hand with the best ones. For 40 years, this beautiful little world brought into being by one family has watched over the lake – and long may it stand.
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