Our favourite guests, by far, are the ones who don’t come back for lunch. We’ve even talked about shouting guests a bottle of wine if they stay away until afternoon tea. We’re not callous or inhospitable. We just know what people like, normally before they do.
The options for lunch on Lord Howe are endless. You can ride your bike to any of the 10 wood-fired BBQ spots around the island, and cook Lord Howe Island kingfish, New England lamb, Richmond River prawns or Riverine beef, with salads and homemade bread. As per tradition, we’ll drop the BBQ hamper and esky of drinks to your preferred BBQ spot (and pick them up later), so long as you light the fire and cook the food. It’s a good deal. There’s something earthy and grounding about lighting a fire, and any pre-holiday anxieties tend to drift away with the smoke. Guests always come back shoeless, island-style, and remain shoeless for the rest of their stay.
The other 557 lunch spots on Lord Howe have no BBQ facilities and require you to bring a packed lunch. It can be as simple as a ham sandwich or one-dish salad, or we can include stuffed olives, sundried capsicum and roasted eggplant mezze, just enough nuts and crumbly cheddar to keep you going until dinner, and of course our guest favourite ‘high energy’ muesli bars. With all those nuts, dried fruits, lashes of butter and syrup they’re sure to give you the fuel to get that hike up to Kims Lookout in before dinner. One of the best spots to enjoy your packed lunch is the summit of Mt Gower, looking down 875 vertical metres to the lagoon and reef below. It’s so high that you’ve walked from subtropical beaches to temperate rainforest. After the climb, everything tastes good.
