Lake House, a 33-room luxury lodge and fine-dining icon in Daylesford, 90 minutes’ drive from Melbourne, is 40 this year. Surely a few centuries in “hospitality years”. Legendary proprietor Alla Wolf-Tasker AM and husband Allan Wolf-Tasker – an artist, builder and teacher who died in 2022 – secured the original six-acre block for just $14,000 at the tail end of the 1970s.

“I did have connections in Daylesford, but we chose it because it was cheap. We never stopped to think about why it was cheap,” Alla tells Broadsheet with her signature dry-as-a-Martini delivery. “There was just nothing here – eight shops in a mostly closed down street, 17 to 21 per cent unemployment. Most of regional Australia was in a pretty bloody mess at that stage.”

These days, the property is a discreet, inviting retreat with various wings of accommodation connected via mossy walkways with manicured gardens and spectacular views of the namesake lake. There’s a relaxing day spa in the trees, a full-sized tennis court and a shimmering infinity pool. The design has been described as “Hamptons-esque”, after the upscale New York enclave, with plush carpets, a tasteful riot of beautiful cushions, elegant couches, stacked bookshelves and spectacular canvases painted by Allan adorning many of the walls.

Then there’s the centrepiece restaurant, where Alla remains culinary director. Elaborate plates emerge from the kitchen carried by sleek waitstaff. A perfect vegetable tart with broad beans and burrata, perhaps, or tender local duck artfully plated with young fennel, parsley root and almond. Creative, refined, old-school, but always innovative. (In the morning, hotel guests can also get one of Australia’s best breakfasts.)

Four decades ago, a regional restaurant of this calibre was almost unimaginable in Victoria, where the best food you could find was often a counter meal at the pub. Back then, Allan ran the St Kilda Alternative School and Alla worked in catering. She dreamed of emulating the regional restaurants that served local cuisine she had seen travelling through France some years earlier, cuisine centred on small villages and their providores and growers.

“We were nuts,” admits Alla today. “There was no business plan or anything. Allan started building and I started planting… Allan did everything, even most of the plumbing,” she recalls. “I had a baby, Larissa, strapped to one hip and a nail bag on the other and we built a 40-seat restaurant with two bedrooms upstairs for us to live in.”

For the first five years, the couple remained based in Melbourne, driving to Daylesford each weekend for service. Early customers expected a self-respecting regional eatery to provide a protein and three vegetables, or Devonshire tea in the afternoon. Alla’s first menu featured a twice-cooked cheese soufflé made with homemade goat’s cheese and some pigeons freshly shot outside Castlemaine. “I wanted the craft and the art of high-end dining without the bullshit. So, we called it fine dining with the top button undone.”

Word soon began to spread. There was an influential early review written by Rita Erlich published in The Age. The single phone started to ring in the kitchen, and Alla would answer it covered in flour. People would ask where Daylesford was and the Wolf-Taskers would send them a paper map in the post.

“Everyone told us we were going to fail – including my mother – but that was like waving a red rag to a bull,” she says. “I think that’s one of the reasons for our longevity. And I’ve always remembered not to follow fads – if we’d followed fads, we would have been an izakaya, a Korean barbeque, opened the kitchen to public view, then closed it, then opened it again.”

In the 1990s, Lake House expanded with an ever-evolving array of accommodation and a luxury spa, climbing to the top of must-visit lists around the world. The business powered through four economic downturns and, by 2018, was financially secure and riding high. It’s then that Alla stumbled across a rundown farm outside town and saw the chance to finally close the loop. It was a place to grow most of their own produce, with a bakery, orchard, olive grove and beehives. “Allan said ‘no, we can’t afford it’, and I bid for it anyway,” Alla reveals. “It was a rash move, but we thought we could manage it. And we would have, but two weeks after we opened Dairy Flat Farm … we got locked down for seven months and almost lost the lot.”

Things have recovered somewhat since Covid, but Alla still worries about the future of the industry. “There’s not a lot of money around. Victoria in particular is having a tough time,” she says of the current landscape. “Everyone says ‘fine dining’s dead’, but I’ve heard that for years. A healthy industry should have everything from the lowest couple-run cafe to a gastropub, to a bistro, to the most refined offering. It’s the top end that trains, and staff get filtered through the industry from there.”

Lake House is a singular vision – very few businesses thrive under the helm of a single chef or proprietor for four decades. But these days, Alla is quietly battling ovarian cancer, and the majority of the operations is left to daughter Larissa Wolf-Tasker, who shares many of the same steadfast qualities as her mother.

“I do worry for Larissa, it’s a big thing to take on this whole shebang that her father and I created,” says Alla. “But it’s her home, so she wouldn’t want to abandon it quickly. She has children and [her husband] Robin works there, too. There are people on the team who have been with us for over 20 years and they’re part of the family. But who knows what’s going to happen to the world in the next 40 years?”

Alla remains cautiously optimistic, as always. “Having good food and good people around me, and a lot of joy and love, is part of my formula for success.”

lakehouse.com.au @lakehousedaylesford

Lead image credit: Alla Wolf-Tasker. Courtesy of Lake House.