Chef Jo Barrett opens restaurant at Surf Hotel in Torquay, Victoria
Two years after closing Lorne bistro Little Picket, Jo Barrett is back cooking in a different town on the Great Ocean Road. Plus: Three more coastal openings to try nearby.
Two years after closing her unique restaurant at Lorne’s bowling club, chef Jo Barrett is returning to cooking on the Surf Coast with a similar community-first mentality.
Just up the road in Torquay, Victoria’s gateway to the old Great Ocean Road Age Appropriate Food Guide Chef of the Year leads the culinary offering at the much-loved Surf Hotel, a newly renovated 16-room waterfront motel.
“I always wanted to work in a restaurant with accommodations to complement people’s experience,” Barrett says. “An old-school motel is pretty cool.”
The restaurant seats 60 people, with a deck that can accommodate 50 more people depending on the weather.
“It’s a friendly, simple space filled with incredible artwork,” says Barrett. “The architects and designers have made it happen. It feels like it’s been here forever.”
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The menu has been designed to appeal to locals and tourists, including surfers at nearby Bells Beach.
“The food is pretty light, with lots of vegetables and leaves, steak frites and approachable things like schnitzel with parsley sauce,” says Barrett. “We want it to have a welcoming feel, somewhere between a restaurant and a home-cooked meal.”
The dishes are prepared in collaboration with head chef Aaron Brodie, with whom Barrett first worked at Oakridge winery and for whom he received the first of many Good Food chef hats in 2016, along with Matt Stone.
“It’s great to be cooking with Aaron again, we have the same beliefs in cooking,” says Barrett. “We like classic flair rather than modern and flashy things.”
His return to the Surf Coast means he can buy from many of the farmers who supply his Lorne venture, Little Picket; This earned hats by trading hats from the come-as-yourself bowling club.
The vagaries of the land and seasons are accommodated in flexible dishes. Rainbow chard is stuffed with rice and olives along with the day’s greens, while the made-from-scratch fish finger sandwich features a different species in each crumbled piece of fish.
Barrett’s partner Dave Osgood is in the dining room and has created a locally focused drinks list.
Barrett is also known for his zero-waste ethos, expressed most radically in Future Food System, a closed-loop pop-up house and restaurant that Joost Bakker built in Federation Square in 2021.
After being named Chef of the Year in 2023, he left hospitality to found Wild Pie, a company with a different take on meat pie. The Beechworth-based organization aims to reduce environmental damage caused by deer, wild boar and goats by breeding wild game and turning them into pies and deflated simulations.
The schnitzel at Surf Hotel is made with wild venison, and the menu also includes wild boar dim sums, all sourced from Discovered Wild Foods, with which Wild Pie joined forces in 2025. Discovered encourages mobile hunters to harvest introduced species; Barrett is a shareholder in both companies.
“I love what we do and I’ve learned a lot, but I’m a chef and I still really love restaurants,” he says. “So I’ll do both.”
Three more new beach restaurants to try nearby
Hazel, Torquay
This contemporary Greek restaurant has set Torquay’s waterfront dining scene alight when it arrives in the summer months. Co-owner Jason Gugliotti — also behind local charcoal chicken outfit Pollo Rotisserie — and his uncle Gino gutted the former Bob Sugar space, refitting it with crafted walls, tactile features and terra-cotta tones to create a modern Greek feel. Ricky Galindo, Tonka’s former head chef, runs the kitchen and kneads fresh pita every morning to keep up with thousands of orders a week during peak season. It’s all about simple dishes taken in new directions: seared fish with lemon ouzo granita; saganaki with sticky grilled figs and rosemary-honey butter; The lamb is slowly roasted on a spit. Stay here and spend the night drinking ouzo with the owners.
17 Esplanade, Torquay, elatorquay.com
Boccabona, Ocean Grove
One of the Bellarine’s best-kept secrets is Mona Cicchetti Bar, an Italian restaurant that locals flock to among Wallington farms. The hotel’s owners, local couple Luca Guadagnin and Amy Springer (also behind Barwon Heads pizzeria Che Vuoi), have completed the hospitality trifecta with a new pasta bar in the heart of Ocean Grove that pays homage to Guadagnin’s northern Italian upbringing. Designed to replicate a simple chalet in the Dolomites, Boccabona’s dining room is adorned with paintings of Guadagnin’s family and hometown. Fresh pasta references family recipes, from slow-cooked lamb ragu to pork and veal bolognese, and Italian wines dominate the drinks. Pasta making lessons are also in the plans.
91 Parade, Ocean Grove, boccabona.com.au
Emily Holgate- Emily is the producer of The Age’s Good Food App. He has previously written for magazines such as Broadsheet and Urban List.Connect via email.
