Upstairs at the Budgewoi Hotel, Central Coast
Lago Cucina
Handmade pasta and Italian cocktails over Lake Budgewoi
Lago Cucina
Lago Cucina sits on the first floor of the Budgewoi Hotel, reached by the hotel's central stairs, and looks out across Lake Budgewoi. It is a contemporary Italian trattoria, and a Central Coast one rather than a city room: Mediterranean fittings, a bar working off the Italian coast, and the pub trading on below. Lunch is a weekend service. Dinner runs four nights, Thursday through to Sunday.
Pasta is made in-house, and the cooking around it favours bold, generous flavours. Cocktails take their cue from the Italian coast, and there is a house beer and a house Italian wine kept behind the bar. On Thursday evenings any pasta on the list comes with one of them, $30 all up — a good reason to come on a Thursday.
Groups are a good part of what the room does. Tables from 12 to 30 order a banquet to share, and the Cellar — a semi-private space set inside the main dining room — keeps a smaller party together without shutting it off from the rest of the restaurant. For a bigger occasion the whole floor can be taken over, seated or standing, with the events team working the day out beforehand.
The room
Private dining
The whole floor, or the Cellar
Seated, the restaurant takes 120; for a cocktail party it holds 150, with the Cellar available on its own for a smaller group.
120 seated · 150 cocktail
Full capacity is 120 seated and 150 for cocktails; the Cellar handles 30 at the table and 35 on their feet.
Lago Cucina
What's on here
An SRG Hospitality venue
Lago Cucina belongs to SRG Hospitality, the group Bill and Kathleen Drakopoulos started in 2000 and that Daniel Drakopoulos and Perry Drakopoulos now run as managing directors.