Torquay’s New Surf Hotel Is a Beachfront Diner for All Occasions, by Top Chef Jo Barrett

The mercury is starting to drop, but a new destination diner is heating things up on the Surf Coast, with one of the region’s most beloved chefs in the kitchen.

It’s been two years since chef Jo Barrett, celebrated for her game-changing zero-waste ethos, closed her Lorne Bowls Club diner Little Picket. Now she’s cooking at a new address – 50 minutes closer to Melbourne – at the freshly minted Surf Hotel in Torquay.

Smack-bang on The Esplanade overlooking Torquay’s front beach, the bar and restaurant is part of what was once the tired Surf City Motel. The site has been reimagined and rechristened as the suave, design-forward Surf Hotel, bookable for stays from May 18. Behind it is Blackwood Hotels, a new venture by Melbourne-based developers Jack Davis and George Robinson that aims to breathe life into old, classic Australian architecture with considered new accommodation.

Occupying such prime real estate, it didn’t take long for word to spread about the Barrett-led restaurant, which opened at Easter in the former Zeallys Bar & Grill. Cleverly, it splits the difference between the surplus of casual dining and drinking options in the area, and the fine-dining finesse of outliers such as Samesyn.

By extending and elevating the front deck for more room and better ocean views, the Surf Hotel has sundowners sorted. A racing-red awning marks the spot against the building’s original brickwork, where a sea of sandy toes in Birkenstocks descends at happy hour, when the beers are $9 and the Coconut Margs are $14.

“As much as we’re a hotel, we’re for the locals, too,” Barrett says.

“It’s flexible enough that you can grab a beer and a fish-finger sanga after a surf, or come in for a long Sunday lunch. Like Little Picket, we really want it to be a gathering place for the community.”

Barrett’s head chef is Aaron Brodie, with whom she worked at Oakridge Wines. Their menu reads like that of a fancy pub, but it goes above and beyond in produce and provenance, with a fluidity that gives them “freedom to respond to real-time farm lists”.

You might find mortadella made in-house. Or chilli-oil-doused wild-boar dimmies from Wildpie, the business Barrett has been developing since closing Little Picket, which puts invasive wild game into pastry. Or a similarly wild venison schnitzel “that’s been outselling the steak frites”, the plate beneath it flooded with a verdant, velvety parsley cream.

Prized producers in rotation include Southern Seagreens, whose wakame upgrades the butter that comes with house-baked focaccia, and The Mushroom Connection, whose king oysters are fried crisp and served with a creamy, aged-fenugreek-spiced cashew dip.

As the restaurant finds its feet, the menu will adapt to cater to what diners want. But, Barrett says, “We’ll always be driven by good produce – and what’s good for the planet”.

One constant is this seaside-chic dining room, with doors and windows flung open to let the salty breeze in. Settle in the lounge for a session in front of the restored, glossy-tiled fireplace. Perch at the American-walnut bar, beneath two pendant lights that flow like fabric and glow like amber resin, but are actually latex. The shades are by Collingwood-based artisan Molly Younger, in collaboration with Surf Hotel’s interior designer Pasquale Cook. Torquay’s surf-town essence is referenced in art throughout the hotel; in the restaurant a centrepiece painting by Paul McNeil – one of surf brand Mambo’s OG artists – is aptly flush with board fins.

This is daytrip-worthy dining, but when the hotel behind it opens later this month, you can save yourself the drive home.

Surf Hotel
35 The Esplanade, Torquay

Hours:
Wed & Thu 3pm–late
Fri to Sun noon–late

surfhotel.com.au