The Victorian spa town where food and wellness combine
I find glittering gems well worth a visit.
“Are you a local?” It’s a loaded question in the twin spa towns of Daylesford and Hepburn, just over an hour’s drive northwest of Melbourne. It’s an easy drive, and the rolling hills, healing waters and wellness retreats have long made the area a favourite for weekending Melburnians.
Food and wine has been part of the area’s DNA since a swathe of European immigrants arrived for the gold rush in the mid-19th century. A few thousand Swiss Italians remained, seduced by the mineral springs and the natural beauty – it’s often compared with Europe’s alpine regions.
Hepburn’s main street is festooned with Swiss and Italian flags and bears the stone facade of Lucini’s Macaroni Factory, Australia’s first pasta factory. Locals forage for chestnuts between May and July and celebrate their heritage with an annual Swiss Italian food and wine festival. But just who gets to call themselves a local is a question that surfaces repeatedly in the two days I spend here. “Unless you have ancestors buried in the cemetery, you don’t call yourself a local,” says one resident who moved her young family to Daylesford in the last throes of Victoria’s interminable lockdowns.
Although the region has always been a lure for treechangers, this is not like Byron Shire with its many hamlets overrun by barefoot Porsche drivers. It was a true local matriarch, Alla Wolf-Tasker, who first started drawing the culinary crowd to Daylesford when she and her late husband Allan spawned the regional farm-to-table movement with their beloved restaurant Lake House, which turned 40 this year. Yet the number of regional Victorian restaurants closing in the past few months has been striking. Harry’s Hepburn, where I enjoyed lunch, shut its doors since I visited in March, as has nearby restaurant Frank and Connie’s Kitchen. The closures have been blamed on rising insurance and compliance costs, with the cost-of-living crisis making for a perfect storm.
And yet on my recent trip I found glittering gems well worth a visit. Chef Aaron Schembri, another true local, tells me over dinner at Kadota, the Japanese restaurant he owns with his wife, Risa Kadota, that he was one of the last babies born in the old Daylesford hospital. “I fell in with the wrong crowd when I was 15,” he says. To keep himself out of trouble he went to Melbourne to work for George Calombaris at The Press Club, then Joe Grbac at Saxe, before training under Hajime Yoneda at his three-star Michelin restaurant in Osaka.
The prodigal son returns with a knockout restaurant inside a historic 1860s stone building located on the very streets where he used to run amok. The couple have created a fine diner that fuses the ingredients of Schembri’s hometown with the flavours and hospitality of Kadota’s native Japan. At its core, the restaurant embodies the Japanese concept of omotenashi – “to wholeheartedly look after guests”.
It’s a nurturing space, and Schembri’s intricately crafted dishes – a bowl of Victorian snapper, grounded by a warming dashi consommé, topped with a smoked eel crisp shaped into the skeleton of a fish, for example – place him among the country’s most exciting young chefs.
I see the back of Schembri and Kadota the following night as they leave an early dinner sitting at Bistro Terroir, a cosy French restaurant a few doors away. Chef and owner Matthew Carnell (not a local) trained at Michelin two-starred Sur Mesure under Thierry Marx in France before bringing his love affair with French cuisine to the Victorian countryside.
“The whole family helped,” Carnell tells me. “My sister was the interior designer, Dad was the architect, and Mum makes trays of macarons for us.” It has all the classic bistro trappings – dark wood floors, exposed brick walls, a piquant tartare de (local) boeuf to start, and hearty pours of pinot noir from local winery Musk Lane. Our waiter has lived in the region for well over a decade, yet he is reluctant to call himself a local. “No relatives in the cemetery?” I ask. He shakes his head.
Daylesford and Hepburn are home to the most mineral springs in the country, and became a destination to “take the waters” in the 1860s. You can still find visitors and residents filling their Frank Greens at pumps throughout the region.
Those more inclined to sample the local vino – this is chardonnay and pinot noir country – should head directly to Winespeake Cellar and Deli on Daylesford’s high street. Owner Owen Latta is local viticulture royalty; as the head winemaker at the family winery, Eastern Peake, a 30-minute drive west, he was raised among the vines.
The famed Daylesford markets happen every Sunday. Otherwise, the shops are stocked with local produce – pickles from local growers Adsum Farmhouse are a highlight. Lake Daylesford is the perfect spot to picnic, and the locals’ family-friendly swimming haunt is known as “The Beach”.
If you’re not inclined to picnic, take a turn about the lake (it’s mandatory) with a pit stop at The Boathouse. This is not a takeaway coffee spot (they have signs all over to tell you as much). Rather, pull up a chair overlooking the placid waters for a plate of trout tartare and a glass of riesling from local winery Granite Hills.
Before leaving I learn that there are ways for interlopers to earn their stripes. “If you live here through seven winters without leaving you get to call yourself a local,” says Carnell, who opened Bistro Terroir in 2018. The weather has just started to turn cold as I pack my bags. “For us, that’s just one more to go.”
Checklist
Getting there: Daylesford is an easy hour or so from Melbourne. Best to drive so you can get around easily.
Stay: Hepburn Springs Escape (hepburnbathhouse.com) was established in 1895 as the region’s first bathhouse. The complex has multiple accommodation options, including the capacious Hepburn Springs Penthouse. It boasts two bedrooms, two fireplaces, a giant butlers’ kitchen, a sauna and a sprawling terrace. The main bedroom has a spa bath that you’ll need to start filling on arrival; depending on the length of your stay, it might be full by the time you check out. Down at the bathhouse, guests can indulge in a number of wellness treatments and soak in the mineral-rich waters in public, semi-private, or private conditions. The spa couches, where jets of water shoot at your back (or front, if you want to make people feel uncomfortable) are a highlight.
Dine: Beautiful regional dining at Kadota (kadotarestaurant.com.au) and Bistro Terroir (bistroterroir.com.au). Alla Wolf-Tasker’s Lake House is a national treasure (lakehouse.com.au). She sells the region’s best croissants at her restaurant and cafe Wombat Hill House (wombathillhouse.com.au) in the botanic gardens located on the crest of an extinct volcano.
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