Four months and eight skips of rubbish later, a High Country pub is back with an old-school look and a fresh menu from a Melbourne chef.
Australia’s smaller country towns usually follow the “one of everything” rule: one pub, one fish and chip shop, one Chinese restaurant. Yackandandah, population 1100, is lucky enough to again have two pubs, after four mates reopened The Yack Hotel on Friday with surf-n-turf, pot pies and other pub crowd-pleasers that celebrate north-east producers.
Known as the “bottom pub”, the two-storey venue three hours from Melbourne closed in September and had been untouched for more than 30 years, according to new owner Dale Kemp.
In the four-month restoration, fake indoor plants were ditched – part of eight skips of rubbish cleared out – and black and grey paint was replaced with brown and cream. Green tartan carpet and amber bullion glass panels that channel the 1970s complete the cosy new look.
“It’s really important when you walk into a pub, that you feel almost like you’re at home,” Kemp says. “The fire is going, you can hang out with friends, and have a conversation with the person behind the bar.”
Kemp took on the1868 pub with partner Brittany Hart, and friends Jackson Cartwright and Sian Haycock. The latter two are locals; Kemp and Hart often visited from Melbourne, where Kemp worked as executive chef across popular cafes including Terror Twilight and Ophelia.
“I’ve been to a lot of towns in Victoria, and almost every little one in the north-east. Yack was the only one where Britt and I thought: ‘We could live here’,” says Kemp.
When the Yackandandah Hotel came up for sale, they jumped on it.
Using local ingredients was a priority for Kemp on his menu. “Everyone is just so passionate about their little thing they do. It’s really exciting to cook with that and also explain that to the customers.”
There’s baked camembert from How Now dairy outside Shepparton, Beechworth Honey coats the beer nuts, and Rutherglen muscat in sticky date pudding. More than half the wine comes from Victoria’s north-east. Cocktails such as the Gold Rush feature rye whiskey from Backwoods, a distillery located just minutes from the pub.
The menu ticks off the familiar with cheeseburgers, schnitzels and steaks (add optional grilled prawns for $16) but there’s also a mushroom burger, wild venison ragu on pappardelle, and lamb ribs cooked for 24 hours and finished with a Sichuan-style spice rub.
While the four partners were inspired by Melbourne pubs such as Fitzroy’s Marquis of Lorne and the Sporting Club Hotel in Brunswick, they knew this needed a different approach.
“If you copy and pasted one of their pubs out here, it wouldn’t be the same,” says Kemp.
In the spirit of honouring the old pub, Kemp and co. restored its French oak dining tables, repurposed bricks from the original structure they found buried outside, and retained existing walls, fireplaces and picture rails. Timber for the horseshoe bar top and a large communal table came from a nearby farm.
The beer garden’s stage will soon be booked with local acts, and upstairs, six rooms are being restored, with plans to offer accommodation by summer.
Lunch and dinner daily (dinner only until Aug 5)
1 High Street, Yackandandah, theyackhotel.com.au
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Emma Breheny – Emma is Good Food’s Melbourne eating out and restaurant editor and editor of The Age Good Food Guide.
