Confessions of a Café Owner.
Let’s be honest.
Only masochists open cafés right now.
The hospitality industry is wobbling, margins are thin, weekends disappear, and everyone seems to be running on caffeine and grit.
So yes, opening the Purple House Kitchen in March 2025 looked slightly unhinged, but here’s the truth.
I’ve been running one my whole adult life already.
Did you know that in my twenties, thirties, and forties, I was known as the food police to my six children?
Processed food was not allowed past our front gate.
If it came in a packet with a long ingredient list, it would end up in the rubbish bin.
This did not make me popular, but I took the role of bad cop in my stride.
It went with the territory.
And by territory, I mean homesteading in remote Tasmania.
I was motivated by a deep desire to live differently from my own mother, who had endured a life shaped by pain, sugar, and well-meaning ignorance.
At the back of beyond in north-east Tasmania, we grew our own meat and vegetables.
I baked bread, sewed clothes, fermented everything that stood still long enough, and lived as a traditional wife long before that label existed.
Little did I know that while I was busy being different from my mother, my children were busy wanting to be different from me.
They were mortified by their weird upbringing.
At school, they threw their homemade lunches into the bushes, traded them for other kids’ lollies, and eyed processed food like it was forbidden treasure.
Meanwhile, I carried on baking, fermenting, growing, and cooking, completely unrepentant.
For around 20 years, I cooked three meals a day for eight people.
After that, for another 25 years, the table grew and shrank with who stayed, who left, who returned, and who brought friends.
If you do the maths, that’s 175,200 meals in those first twenty years alone — and let’s not even talk about the next twenty-five.
So opening a café didn’t feel like a business decision.
It felt like muscle memory.
At one point, we also grew 50 heirloom varieties of garlic, because I genuinely thought I was doing my bit for the world.
But after an enthusiastic radio interview about garlic in the year 2000, long before podcasts, my kids were dubbed the smelly Robertsons!
This desire to preserve heirloom varieties from extinction explains why we now cook with ancient grains, Emmer, Kamut, Khorasan, and Spelt, grains that existed long before modern interference.
Our bodies can eat these grains without bloating and irritation.
These days, the Purple House Kitchen has a new heartbeat.
Lisanne, my daughter, is now the creative brain and intuitive hands behind the menu, and she has a magical touch.
She cooks the way she was raised from scratch, with care.
Her menu supports the body while delights the senses.
At the Purple House Kitchen:
- We cook with tallow and butter
- We do not use seed oils
- We do not microwave food
- We do not use harmful ingredients.
The drinks menu carries the same intention.
- Organic coffee, thoughtfully brewed.
- Organic hot chocolate, rich and comforting, finished with homemade marshmallows that feel like a small celebration in a cup.
- A curated selection of local teas, chosen for warmth, balance, and ease.
- Vinos from local bespoke vineyards, processed naturally
- Living water is available on each table as part of the dining experience.
Today, the Purple House Kitchen opens from Wednesday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm.
We are closed Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
On Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, the entire place hums with life: our therapists moving between sessions, clients coming and going, reception staff answering questions, Lisanne in the Kitchen, friendly faces at the counter, cups clinking, conversations unfolding, people reading, chatting, or simply enjoying being alive.
Beyond the Kitchen, the experience naturally extends into the surrounding Purple House Garden Estate.
Winding garden paths invite wandering into the trees for some free forest therapy.
Twenty-year-old mazes and labyrinths offer moments of reflection.
Many people arrive for a meal and find themselves staying longer than planned, enjoying the peace and tranquillity.
The Purple House Garden Estate offers a collection of unique on-site Airbnb’s.
Each space is thoughtfully designed to foster a sense of adventure and restoration.