10 of the best Norfolk Island restaurants and cafes

Dine on everything from fresh-from-the-sea fare to flavour-crammed breakfast classics at these Norfolk Island restaurants and cafes.

Slow food is more than a movement on Norfolk Island, it’s a way of life – and visitors reap the benefits. With much of its food grown in the island’s rich volcanic soil, including locally made meats, cheese, coffee and honey, and a bounty of fresh seafood waiting just offshore, every meal is a delicious occasion.

Locals have made the most of what they’ve been given, starting with the bananas; green bananas are fried into crispy fritters or cooked in milk to create ‘mudda’ (dumplings), while overripe bananas are often mashed and baked to create pihli. Nothing is wasted.

There are over 20 restaurants, cafes and takeaway shops to choose from – no small feat for an island roughly eight kilometres long and five kilometres wide. Here, a hit list to satisfy hearty appetites.

1. The Golden Orb Cafe

breakfast and coffee at The Golden Orb Cafe, Norfolk Island — Fuel up with a fine breakfast at The Golden Orb Cafe. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

Embrace the natural splendour of Norfolk Island’s lush surroundings with a seat in The Golden Orb Cafe ’s leafy courtyard. Open for breakfast and lunch from 7am, Wednesday to Sunday, the Norfolk Island eatery is a family-owned operation where locals love to unwind. The menu kicks off with the likes of a brekkie burger with hashbrown and hollandaise, eggs benedict several ways and a rich shakshouka before the kitchen switches into seafood crepes and homemade fettuccini with creamy garlic prawns for lunch. Just add Seven Miles’ Cat’s Pyjamas coffee, roasted in Sydney’s northern beaches, for a top-notch meal drenched in delights.

2. Cafe LaPérouse

a French-inspired dining setup at Cafe LaPérouse, Norfolk Island — Cafe LaPérouse nails French-inspired dining. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

Throwing open its doors in February 2025, Cafe LaPérouse is the island’s first French-inspired eatery and one of the newest culinary hot spots. A little slice of Paris right opposite the airport, the Norfolk Island cafe nails French-inspired dining while utilising the region’s finest ingredients. Think croque Mademoiselle, fluffy omelettes and savoury cheese puffs better known as gougère and adored globally. Unsurprisingly, it’s run by a French family who craft their magic entirely on-site and are also partial to whipping up unmissable sweet and savoury pastries. Wash your meal down with a Belgian chocolate, or two.

3. The Olive Cafe

a customer ordering at The Olive Cafe, Norfolk Island — Order a takeaway coffee from The Olive Cafe. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

The smell of bacon cooking on the grill and freshly brewed Old Quarter coffee lures just about everyone to The Olive Cafe come dawn. Open Monday to Saturday for breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. The Norfolk Island cafe’s menu boasts daily crowd-pleasers and hearty Italian-inspired fare at night. Find homemade muffins, smoothie bowls, breakfast burgers and crepes early in the day before burgers, salads and sandwiches roll out at lunch.

4. Bailey’s Restaurant at Governor’s Lodge

Located at Norfolk Island’s Governor’s Lodge, one of the best Norfolk Island accommodation options, Bailey’s Restaurant is renowned for its historic digs and modern Australian à la carte menu. Dishes highlight the culinary creativity and local flavours of Norfolk Island, spanning seafood starters of seared scallops, seafood pappardelle, and a garlic prawn hot pot, while sous vide lamb rump and chermoula king prawns impress as mains.

5. Salty Beer Garden

clinking cocktail glasses at Salty Beer Garden, Norfolk Island — Pair casual bites with delightful cocktails at Salty Beer Garden. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

Located in Burnt Pine, Salty Beer Garden is your trusty local pub and the place to seek out when laidback dining is high on the agenda. Serving up cold beers, casual bites and garden views, the Norfolk Island pub plates up gourmet burgers, toasties, fish and pulled pork tacos, rice bowls and wraps, plus a dedicated kids’ menu. The kitchen opens from midday to 8pm every day, but time your visit to a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday when live music dials up rowdy fun.

6. The Homestead Restaurant

a close-up shot of a meat dish at The Homestead Restaurant, Norfolk Island — The Homestead Restaurant elevates the dining experience with an intensified menu of the island’s seasonal produce. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

It’s the wood-fuelled Argentinian Perilla grill at The Homestead Restaurant that elevates this dining experience. Cooking over embers intensifies the flavours of the island’s seasonal produce, meat and seafood – and it’s all thanks to the owner’s dad, who engineered it for Kurt and Jill Menghetti when they opened this contemporary boutique restaurant in 2019. Housed inside a 1930s island home, the culinary experience is one of the island’s most elevated with the likes of grilled wild octopus done with chorizo, local fish paired with cauliflower puree, duck confit and refined desserts lighting up tables. The team also bakes the island’s only wood-fired naturally fermented sourdough, attracting a cult following of its own.

7. Hilli Restaurant

a dining table at Hilli Restaurant, Norfolk Island — Pull up a chair for a European-inspired feast. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

In native Norfolk Island language, ‘hilli’ translates to lethargy, which perfectly describes how the owners of Hilli Restaurant want you to feel once you’re done dining with them. Feast inside or out in the courtyard alongside bright blooms as a European-inspired menu showcases the destination’s rich spoils. Traditional duck pâté infused with Cointreau, a creamy seafood crepe, delicate cheese soufflè, beef eye filet wrapped in smoky bacon and other moreish knockouts will keep spirits soaring. Visitors should note that they’re closed Wednesday and Thursday.

8. Baunti Tours

Determined to sample the freshest of flavours while visiting Norfolk Island? Once you’ve ticked off everything above, take your passion to the next level with one of Baunti Tours ’ group expeditions. Offering a progressive dinner inside a private island home, a gourmet picnic and even a breakfast bushwalk, operators have been shining a light on the island’s produce for more than 20 years. Our picks include the traditional Baunti Fish Fry, recreating ancient cooking adopted by the island’s original communities, and the Lavender Farm Tour taking guests through blooming lavender fields and into lunch built from paddock-to-plate wonders.

9. Bounty Bar & Grill

a steak dinner at Bounty Bar & Grill, Norfolk Island — Feast on a juicy steak to entice your appetite. (Image: Norfolk Island Tourism/Lumea Photo)

Housed within a charming 1900s building at the end of town is Bounty Bar & Grill . Open for lunch and dinner, the Norfolk Island restaurant offers a contemporary menu that champions local meats and produce with a range of two-person share platters to seriously entice. Don’t overlook the Surf and Turf, a juicy steak cooked to your liking and served alongside King prawns or seared scallops, and the loaded pizza selections, too. The team also open their doors from 9am for coffee and cake.

10. Juddway

Grab and go a flavour-packed foot-long sando at Juddway , a Norfolk Island takeaway joint that instantly endears. It’s a fuss-free feed filled with locally sourced standouts, such as the prawn and crab roll, classic BLT, cold cut creations and saucy Italian meat subs. Simply rock up, pick something off the chalkboard and get stuck in quick sticks, saving you more time to explore the magical destination’s countless gems.

Discover some of the best places to stay on Norfolk Island

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.