There isn’t a more professionally-focused and orientated couple in the hospitality business than Michael and Maria Vaughan, and their latest upgrade of the restaurant menu in the Lodge, with chef James Coffey wielding the pans in the kitchen, is another sign that when the going gets tough, the smart ones just up their game and get to a higher place. The cooking is modern and hip: roast prawns with slow-cooked pork belly; seared scallops with Sauternes sauce; halibut with lobster velouté; pistachio and polenta cake. This hospitality is vital. You don’t build hotels and places to stay out of bricks and mortar: hospitality is what builds hotels, the rest is big boxes with bedrooms: bed factories as they are known in the trade. What you get in Vaughan Lodge, however, thanks to Michael and Maria is a narrative of hospitality that extends back through four generations of their family, working in this town. And that narrative of hospitality, that history, that culture, is why Vaughan Lodge works. It’s the tradition!
