Alla Wolf-Tasker is sitting in the dining room at Lake House, the Daylesford destination she founded with her late husband Allan, 40 years ago. That she’s occupying a table is unusual. She can’t remember the last time she ate in her own restaurant. But our topic is legacy, and the way women build it, and Wolf-Tasker decides the best way to chew it over is literally, during a lunch with daughter Larissa, just three years old when her parents founded the business and now Lake House’s brand manager.

Our table of three discusses all kinds of things: unseasonal pine mushrooms springing up after summer rains, the peacock that visited Wolf-Tasker after her beloved Allan passed away in 2022, the beauty of broccolini shoots and – as so often happens when speaking with successful women – imposter syndrome. “Early on, I went through 
a terrible period where if the mise en place [kitchen preparation] wasn’t right, I didn’t know how to tell the chefs,” she says. “So I would get up at three o’clock in the morning and replace it all.”

Lunch is a parade of produce and technique, service is unobtrusive and expert, a little wine is poured. We tear into sourdough made at the in-house bakery. The kitchen’s deep purple duck ham is furled alongside heirloom beetroot grown just up the road at the family’s Dairy Flat Farm. Lamb as pink as sunset sits in a jus so bright the chandeliers are reflected in it. A kookaburra lands on its special perch on the veranda, awaiting the eye fillet entrusted to delighted guests to dispense. Every morsel and marvel is testimony to Wolf-Tasker’s vision, determination and refusal to listen to naysayers. “In the 1980s, they called me the little foreign woman down by the lake,” she says. Without doubt, Daylesford’s transformation from potato paddocks into wishlist getaway is due to the ever-developing example of Lake House, which now employs 120 people. Appropriately, in 2007, she was named a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to regional tourism and hospitality.

An icon if ever there was one, she demurs at the idea. Her menu begins modestly, “Welcome to our house on the lake” and Alla is listed as culinary director, alongside head chef Brendan Walsh. “People ask me to put my chef’s coat on and sashay around,” she says. “But I never do. I can’t claim to have cooked the food. I may have been involved in the notion of the food and the design of the food and the conversations about the food and what we’re growing to make the food but I just cannot take the credit.” We ponder other chefs – male ones – and whether they would have the same reluctance.

Is there a difference in the way men and women run restaurants? “From my perspective, Lake House came from you wanting to share your vision of hospitality as a refined extension of a country home,” says Larissa. “We wanted people to be comfortable, to share food and foster relationships. That is a very female drive, bringing people together around the table and creating community.” Although Lake House keeps changing, there’s consistency to carry into the next 40 years. “The vision is the same,” says Larissa. “We have this living, breathing beast that keeps expanding but the continuity allows us to bring other people – men and women – along for the ride.”

It has been a privilege to monitor the awakening of global best practice producers in Australia over much of the past 40 years. In fact, it has been doubly a privilege for me – not only as a chef, always on the look out for the best – but also as a long-term judge on sitting at the table of various national awards identifying and promoting Australia’s intent on providing the best and most beautiful produce using sustainable practices.

What has been particularly gratifying is seeing some of our local producers continue to be awarded trophies and gold medals at a national level.

What commenced as a slow trickle years ago, is now a steady stream of primary producers, growers and artisan manufacturers, all will an eye on the regenerative farming of rare animal breeds and heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables, particularly suited to our local climate and terrain.

Historically, Australia is not a country of small-scale artisan farmers and producers passing on a legacy of manufacturing and cultivation skills from one generation to the next. We never had that kind of peasant class. Compared to us, countries like France and Italy have a head start of several centuries of good food culture. In Australia, early land allocation to settlers had mostly gone to urban folk with no agricultural experience, who worked within the then accepted notion that our resources here, of both land and water, were virtually limitless. What could go wrong?

Poorly raised animals within the still dominant industrial food system, together with a reliance on toxic herbicides for plant growth and the massive additives rampant in processed food, have no doubt lead to the increase in ‘first world’ diseases and health problems that continue to plague us.

But thankfully, the tide has been turning. We are all capable of being agents for change. Support your local food community. Grow some food for yourself. Shop at accredited farmers’ markets and engage in conversations with growers and producers. Ask your favourite chefs about the provenance of the ingredients they use. Interest and demand will fuel the important outcomes that this beautiful country and our communities need.

And when you next visit our region, take an interest in the local produce available at our markets and being served at our pubs, cafes and restaurants.

If you are staying with us at Lake House, be sure to join a tour of our beautiful Dairy Flat Farm. You’ll discover the lodge, the bakery, the orchard, olive grove and acres of vegetable plantings. It’s just a few clicks down the road and it’s our investment in the local food sustainability story. And, most of what you enjoy at our table will have been harvested that morning. Our café Wombat Hill House in the Botanical Gardens also not only uses our farm harvest, but sells the beautiful sour dough loaves and pastries – baked at our farm that morning.

Seasonal Essentials

Winter … It’s often a season we try to sidestep in one way or another. Careering energetically down snowy slopes or leaving home to chase the sun. But winter has an intrinsic beauty all of its own. And besides, there’s always been the notion that harmonising with nature’s cycles and patterns might be a healthier way to live.

Certainly when it comes to good health and nutrition, eating seasonally is the best way to go. For cooks and avid gardeners, winter has plenty of deliciousness on offer. And as it turns out the most bountifully available winter vegetables are just so very good for us. All the brassicas from kale and cabbage to brussel sprouts and cauliflower are adept at powering the nutritional needs of this season. Alliums – garlic, shallots and leeks do their bit in warding off colds and clearing blood.  Root vegetables in general, carrots, beets, turnips, sweet potatoes are packed with vitamins and essential minerals. And everyone of these vegetables are delicious in warming soups, slow braised in casseroles or even slow roasted with a drizzle of good olive oil.

You’ll note that ‘slow’ is an oft used word when describing winter cooking. Letting things bubble away gently until delicious smells permeate the house and draw hungry mouths to a shared table. It’s a form of cooking I’ve always reveled in. Amongst its many benefits it also offers the opportunity to multitask of course. But ‘slow’ also relates to how we might generally approach winter.

In traditional Chinese medicine winter is a Yin season. If we look at the animal world its’ clearly a time for slowing down and for the essential conserving of energy. Cooler darker days offer opportunity for meditative space to rest and reflect. Yin time is used to replenish one’s resources and it can (and should be) a very nourishing time. Each of us might have our own version of a winter hibernation – but here in our neck of the woods it can look particularly appealing.

When you’re with us this winter, hopefully you’ll take the opportunity to pause, reflect and nourish yourself. It may be through the enjoyment of our food, much of it lovingly grown just down the road at our beautiful Dairy Flat Farm and cooked with skill, care and served by our team. It may be that you linger over the view of the last golden leaves on the lake foreshore, dose in a deep Japanese bath of hot mineral water, or look into the open flames of the warming fire pit by the lagoon. Slow down, forget yesterday and tomorrow. We are here to provide a myriad of ‘in the moment’ opportunities for you.

– Alla Wolf-Tasker AM
Culinary Director, Lake House Daylesford & Dairy Flat Farm Daylesford

“You can do better.” Those words still ring in my ears, every day. They don’t say you’re not doing a good job, just that you can always do better, you can always push harder. Alla was the confidence I needed in my ability to cook, but also to cook with passion, thought and energy, and most importantly, discipline. Teachings in cooking techniques that have stayed with me to this day: routine, and ritual that I value and pass on.

Respect for ingredients to absorb the beauty and capture the flavours of nature in each dish. Celebrate the earthiness of mushrooms, smell the fresh damp earth, and connect to the ingredient. That I have a seasonal regional restaurant and champion producers is no accident. Alla planted the seed years ago and I am eternally grateful. She never pretended it was easy or that it would come easily to me, just that if I was willing to work, commit and be bloody-minded in my approach, anything was possible.

Alla is a fearless leader with thought and consideration for those around her. My eyes were wide open watching her, always so present in the restaurant, and to this day I find myself in certain moments feeling as if she is just beside me, whispering: “You can do better.”

Finishing at Lake House, Alla said to me: “We will work together again someday.” The funny thing about that is I feel she has been on the journey with me the whole way.

What’s the big fuss about “local food”?

For a moment it felt very much like a fad. And sometimes, in the wrong hands it still does.

Luckily the notion of the critical importance of local food has remained in the hearts of many. Accredited Farmers’ Markets have prospered. Community-supported agriculture boxes and meat packs have become a far more normal way to shop. And of course, in this wonderful burgeoning food bowl that is our ‘hood – all of this and more, has become part of our daily life. Demand of course, in turn, creates initiative and viability. We are fortunate indeed to have a local community that is committed and cares about the source of its food.

And take a look at the reasons preferred for post-COVID ‘flight from cities syndrome’ – availability of fresh local produce is often at the top of the tree changers’ agenda. And so, it is here.

Is this perhaps just the remarkable success story of regional marketing? Certainly not every region is a bountiful food bowl. Many in fact, are still firmly anchored in traditional industrial and generally monocultural agriculture, where nothing that is grown on farm is destined for local tables.

And what does it matter anyhow? What’s this ‘local’ business all about? And why do even Australia’s major supermarkets buy into the spin?

We all bought into this bright glamour package – food that was convenient, cheap and available all year round. Why wait for spring to buy asparagus?  In the process, we lost track of the seasons and lost our connection with the origins of our food. We encouraged the transportation of food to and from the cheapest labour markets. Apples grown in the UK, sent to Africa to be polished and then resent to UK to sit on brightly decorated stands under “grown in UK” banners.

The globalization of food has been one of the worst perils we have imposed on ourselves.

Economic benefits, where income stays within the community, are self-apparent. Beyond all this, there are educational outcomes – the opportunity to learn from people who supply our food. And then the sheer deliciousness to be gained when, unshackled from the need to only grow and pick produce that transports and stores well, these folk revert to varieties and harvesting schedules that are in sync with nature and best for flavour. When was the last time you ate a fresh sweet apricot, and the juice ran down your chin? Eating as local as possible has many benefits and opportunities. Some might call it ‘eating with benefits’.

And the connection to ‘wellness’? Probably the most critical benefit nowadays of local food is transparency. Being able to trace where our food has come from and what’s been done to it has become increasingly important for our health.

So, make that chat with the grower at farmers markets throughout our region count; find out what regenerative organic, biodynamic practices she’s employing. And get your mouth around the new season leafy greens and broad beans already abundant at our local farms not to mention the marvellous Morel mushrooms and spring nettles and dandelions that are top of the foraging list right now. Not only are they delicious – but they are also full of nutritional value.

Go well. Go strong.

Alla Wolf-Tasker AM

It’s still late autumn as I write this, although the crisp nights are signalling winter is just around the corner. I never bemoan the change to the cooler season. For the avid gardener and cook, it heralds different chores and inevitably a completely different source of inspiration.

What may concern us with colder weather is the increased prevalence of colds and flu. This year it’s likely to be especially so, as our efforts to ‘flatten the curve’ over the past two years have had us washing our hands and social distancing much more often. As a result, we had NO flu cases to speak of and our immune systems just haven’t had the workout they would normally have over a winter of socialising or playing.

The trick will be to support and build our immunity as much as possible this year, give it a real BOOST. Vitamin and mineral supplements are often recommended. But of course, it’s the nutritional value of what we choose to eat that is most critical. ‘Good Food Matters’ is a useful mantra to keep in mind when you’re planning what you are going to eat. Local, seasonal and as fresh as possible is a good start.

In our beautiful region, although there are no frosts yet, we’ve harvested all of our (nine varieties of) pumpkins at our Dairy Flat farm, just in case. After all, it’s possible to lose the lot with just one frost…

Hoophouses are still yielding late autumn tomatoes, eggplant and every imaginable variety of pepper. We’re also harvesting beans. In the vegetable beds there are masses of greens, that include the lemony taste of sorrell and the biting heat of various mustard leaves.

We are regularly told that adding diversity to our diets improves the nutritional worth of what we consume. Build variety in your cooking. Try some of the lesser-known tubers mentioned above with your next local Brooklands free-range whey fed pork roast. Or just roast them on their own, adding wedges of onions and whole heads of garlic. Present them at the table drizzled with hommus and a pesto made from the green carrot tops, nuts and a good local olive oil. Add a side salad of winter leaves, some really good bread from our Dairy Flat Farm Bakers or from Two Fold (both at the market).

Good food, together with good sleep prioritising exercise (even if it’s just a ramble through our beautiful surrounds here), socialising, conviviality, and integration in the community, are all critically important for our immune system. As these are things many of us had to forego throughout the lockdowns and travel restrictions of the past two years, our immunity is bound to have taken a battering.

In these difficult times, what we can control are the choices we make when we purchase food for ourselves and our families. Mind you, wellness should be about throwing down a raw fruit and vegetable juice now and then, nor the use of some new ‘fad’ grain or dried berry from somewhere over the other side of the globe. Rather, it’s about the confidence to make informed choices about our regular everyday purchases. Fresh local food is always the best because it’s in season. And, if you’re shopping at a farmer’s market, you’ll often get to meet the grower and can ask about their farming or production practices.

We’re spoilt for choice with weekly farmers’ market across our region bursting with great food from what is now acknowledged to be one of the most productive and sustainable food bowls in Australia. At Daylesford’s weekly Sunday market our own Dairy Flat Farm has a stall filled with sourdough loaves and Viennoisserie from our farm bake house, as well as plenty of just harvested pesticide-free produce.

But what about health and the immune system you ask? Well just check out your health food store or pharmacy to see the number of elderberry supplements, syrups, and powders on the shelf — or online. Elderberry is one of the most commonly used medicinal plants in the world and you will find it in abundance right here. As children, we were never without it at home. It was always used to treat flu and the common cold — one of our many, well-known SARS viruses.

Healthy eating can boost your immunity, lift your spirit and nourish your sense of wellbeing.

Go well! Go strong!

The Daylesford Macedon Ranges region is a foragers delight. In the first of a series of articles, Daylesford’s dining trailblazer, Alla Wolf-Tasker, talks us through some of the seasonal delights that can be found in our region, along with the health benefits they bring with them. We could all do with a little immunity boost right now, so keep your eyes peeled as you explore the farms, forests, meadows and gardens of our region.

The legacy of this year’s long winter of lockdowns and restrictions will not be easy to fix. We are so blessed here in Daylesford that despite periods of isolation, the fresh air and great outdoors of our forests, meadows and even gardens have continued to nourish and supply us. With a little knowledge of what is easily accessible and growing around us, we are able to supplement our diet with nutrient rich immunity boosting foods, herbs and teas

Spring moving into summer is our most optimistic of seasons. Things pop up everywhere. “Too much”, many gardeners and farmers will say as they race to keep up with mowing and weeding. But knowing a little more about some of these bountiful ‘weeds’ might change that perspective.

Slipping into paddocks for a few stinging nettles (I wear well-fitting gardening gloves) is a favourite activity of mine. You can’t miss the nettles. The serrated leaves are covered with fine stinging hairs (which disappear on cooking). They are extraordinarily good for you, containing large amounts of iron and protein, far in excess of what you would find in soya beans. I’ve dehydrated the leaves on occasion to make a tea to be drunk as is, or to be seasoned with honey and lemon. However, a wild weed pie or my version of the Greek ‘Hortopita’ is my favourite use for the nettles together with that scourge of gardeners — the humble dandelion.

The flat rosettes of fine leaves look harmless enough and eventually produce short lived pretty daisy like yellow flowers. They are quickly replaced by delightful dandelion ‘clocks’ which stand proudly upright and remain a continued source of fascination for children who blow into them loudly and watch the seeds carried away by breath and wind.

No matter which direction you’re coming from, it’s the hand-drawn signs and ‘honour boxes’ on the side of our country roads, that offer you clues to one of the biggest preoccupations of the folk in this beautiful region of ours. These may spruik potatoes or other freshly harvested fruit and vegetables, eggs, honey, preserves, compost, and even animal manure. “Local organic horse poo” proclaims one regular sign near a stack of well-filled bags. You stop the car, drop the notes and coins in the honour box and fill your boot. In season there might be punnets of blackberries, chestnuts, mushrooms, bunches of wild daffodils, and fruit windfalls gathered by kids for a bit of pocket money But primarily they signal a property where people are in the business of small scale agriculture of some kind. For an increasing number, it represents the family’s primary source of income as well as a determination and passion to succeed as a producer and grower within a sustainable agriculture model. Regenerative farming is alive and well in our ‘hood.

Good Food means so many different things to different people.  Nowadays with the emphasis on health and our natural immunity that 2020 has brought with it, many are increasingly cautious about the source of their food. It’s a real pleasure to see and it might just be one of the silver linings and a lasting legacy of this difficult time. There’s a laudable desire to reconnect with the source of one’s food and importantly to be involved in the conversation about good nutrition and health for ourselves and our families.

Our own ethos at Lake House has always been to ask “where”, “what”, “who” and “how” about the produce we source and to share the answers with our guests… We now also have the added bonus of our own farm, just down the road. Dairy Flat Farm supplies much of our produce and bakes bread for all our operations. Apart from the opportunity to stay there, guests are regularly offered tours and workshops at the property. It’s gratifying to see interest in this kind of activity on the rise.

Using or buying local offers the likelihood of knowing more about your food. If you are eating out, certainly many of our restaurants and cafés here, quote the source of their produce. If you are staying in self-contained accommodation – head to the local farmers’ markets (there’s at least one somewhere in the region every weekend), buy up the beautiful fresh produce, and take the opportunity to even have a chat with the grower or their family.

The small community-based food market at the old Daylesford Railway Station (every Sunday) is a good case in point. There, (at the very least) you’ll find Adsum Farmhouse; Mt Franklin Organics, Goldfields Cheeses, Two Fold Bake House, Brooklands Free Range farm  (pastured British White beef and Black Berkshire pork), as well as fresh produce, bread, and pastries from our own Dairy Flat Farm.

It might come as a surprise to learn that Alta Wolf-Tasker, the one-woman revolution who created Daylesford’s iconic Lake House out of a weedy paddock more than 30 years ago, has anything left on her to-do list.

But despite running the lauded restaurant along with its boutique accommodation and spa, its sibling Wombat Hill House café and being an all-round champion of central Victoria – with the Order of Australia to prove it – Wolf-Tasker stilt longed for the authenticity of her own freshly baked bread.

“it was a dream of mine to offer a Larger variety of good bread to our guests at Lake House but our kitchens were operating to capacity,” she says. “With the Bake House we’ll be able to produce stow-fermented sourdough bread as well as beautifully laminated croissants, viennoiserie, donuts, breakfast buns and all sorts of deliciousness.”

The Bake House is part of a bigger story in the Wolf-Tasker world. It’s part of Dairy Flat Farm, the latest passion project for Alla, artist husband Allen and daughter Larissa.

Located in the picturesque town of Musk, seven kilometres south-east of Daylesford, this 38-acre property features a huge established orchard, vegetable garden, vineyard, olive grove and the beautiful farmhouse itself.

Housed inside a cellar accessed through a tunnel beneath Dairy Flat’s six luxury-suite Lodge, the Bake House has lured the singular talents of baker Michael James, from Melbourne’s renowned Tivoli Road Bakery, to collaborate in its operation and run regular sourdough baking classes for Lodge guests., “He’s an amazing chef and a great teacher,” says Wolf- Tasker. “When the property came on the market, I had all kinds of notions whizzing about in my head. I visited Michael for a chat and it turned out he and his partner were selling Tivoli Road and he was interested in getting involved in new projects… so it was all serendipitous.”

The force behind Lake House in Daylesford, one of the country’s most celebrated restaurants and regional hotels, the unstoppable Alla Wolf-Tasker is now extending her vision to a new pioneering project.

It’s a brave person who gets between Alla Wolf-Tasker and a good idea. As daughter Larissa tells it, the latest labour of love for the family behind Daylesford’s luxurious Lake House should really never have happened.

Champion of all things local, seasonal and sustainable, Wolf-Tasker had long longed to “put my money where my mouth is” and start growing produce for the restaurant while at the same time offering a new experience for guests.

The family had been searching “for ages” when a property just seven minutes’ drive from Lake House came up for auction. “Mum and I walked around it and loved it,” says Larissa. “We brought Dad and Rob [Larissa’s husband] back, and we got really excited. But we decided it wasn’t the right time. Rob and I were going to start a family, and it would take too much resources. We’d look for something else. But then Mum went and bought it!”

In an age in which any flash-in-the-pan chef brings out a cookbook after two years in business, three decades deserves a street parade and glitter cannon – or, in Alla Wolf-Tasker’s case, a book pretending to be about Lake House but mostly celebrating the small producers who have helped make central Victoria one of the nation’s most exciting food destinations.

There’s never a very long time between drinks at this scatter cushion-strewn paradise on the shores of Lake Daylesford. Lake House is an idyll and aperitivo hour is its north star. But it has been a while between books – 10 years, to be exact – which makes Three Decades On: Lake House and Daylesford not just a worthy marker of the passing years but a timely reappraisal of a food world that has irrefutably changed since Alla and Allen Wolf-Tasker first spied their future on a trash-filled piece of land next to a waterway that was more swamp than lake on the edge of a depressed country town.

It’s an origin story Alla Wolf-Tasker is understandably tired of retelling, but much like a child with a favourite book, its appeal to the food-interested public is undiminished. The car wrecks they had to pull from the waters. The caravan they lived in during the four-and-a-bit years it took to build Lake House. The Thursday trips between their day jobs in the city, infant daughter Larissa strapped in the back seat, to spend four services in their tiny 45-seat restaurant convincing Australian diners more interested in toasted cheese sandwiches and Devonshire tea to submit instead to the pleasures of twice-baked goats’ cheese souffle, shiraz-glazed pigeon and tarte tatin.