Pub with a Purpose at Kin Kin Hotel
John Caruso meets a trio reimagining a hinterland watering hole with equal parts soul, humour and hard work.
As you approach Kin Kin and cross the bridge, a subtle shift occurs. The road narrows, the tempo drops, and you know you’ve stepped into a town with a character and rhythm all its own. For David Ezrine and his wife Ellie, that was all it took. A couple of selfies with their thumbs-up, a conversation that began with “why not?” and a few weeks later, they were the new custodians of The Kin Kin Hotel. Some people buy a house on a whim. The Ezrines bought a pub.
David laughs about being mistaken for a Canadian when he first arrived.
“I didn’t bother correcting people,” he shrugs. “It seemed preferable at the time.” In truth, he’s American by birth, Costa Rican by adventure, English by marriage, and now, an enthusiastic Australia hinterland publican.
“It was accidental,” he says, “but hopefully this is all an upward journey.”
That journey has been anything but ordinary. Ellie, with her British eye for heritage, saw the bones of a tired old building and imagined something more – antique furnishings sourced from the region, taxidermy perched with a wink, Australian art and custom pieces layered in with charm and a dash of nostalgia.
“I wanted nothing to feel overtly new,” she explains. “It was about transforming an unloved building into a place where family, friends and food lovers could gather. Good food and good design should go hand in hand.”
Step inside today and you’ll find exactly that. The Kin Kin Hotel is whimsical without being fussy, elegant without losing its country soul. There are heated bathroom floors, luxe beds and bathrobes upstairs for guests who stay the night; lighting fixtures chosen as carefully as the wine list, and a sense that nothing, whether mirror frames or menu, is left to chance.
And yet, it’s far from pretentious. If anything, it feels like you’ve wandered into a particularly stylish house party, where everyone’s welcome and the host has time to pour you another schooner. Food, of course, is at the heart of the Ezrine’s vision. Enter Oscar Holgado, the hotel’s head chef, though he wrinkles his nose at the title.
“‘Jack of all trades’ is probably more accurate,” he grins. With a Michelin-starred pedigree, Oscar could easily have chased white-tablecloth kitchens around the globe. Instead, he’s chosen Kin Kin, where he tends the market garden by morning and prepares whole animals in the afternoon.
“The goal is to make guests feel like they’re coming to our house for a dinner party,” he says. “The food is refined, but the approach is relaxed. We don’t want stuffy. We want fun.”
That ‘fun’ includes Manuel, the resident pig, and a thriving no-dig garden across the road where vegetables are coaxed from the soil with patience and plenty of compost.
“We’re not growing 100% of the produce,” Oscar admits, “but what we do grow feeds directly into the menu. The rest comes from local producers. It’s about respect for the land and the people who work it.”
David nods when the conversation turns to ethos.
“It’s design, food and hospitality,” he says. “That’s the tripod we’re building on. We want people to feel like they’ve come to someone’s country home. Less clock-watching, more melting into the experience. You can’t fake that; it has to be authentic and evolve.”
Evolve it has. From Thursday to Sunday from 8am, the café hums with locals grabbing freshly-made bread, pastries and coffee; the Pub Pavilion hums for lunch and dinner with live music on weekends; Thursday nights belong to tradies who treat it as their local; while Friday and Saturday nights in The Woodshed, fire and smoke rule the seven-course menu that is a journey of flavours ruled by freshness and availability of the finest produce. The experience is other-wordly, sublime and to be explored further and in detail in our summer issue.
Guests from as far afield as Melbourne check into the refurbished rooms, marvelling at the attention to detail. And always, there’s the sense that something is being born here, not just a business, but a community hub. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Hinterland towns can be parochial, and the arrival of a foreign-accented couple with big ideas was bound to ruffle some feathers.
“We knew there’d be resistance,” David admits. “But you can’t get up on a soapbox. You show people. Let them taste, sit, experience, and then make up their own minds.”
Slowly but surely, sceptics have turned into regulars. “We’ve won them over,” he smiles. “At least most of them.”
What makes The Kin Kin Hotel different from any other hinterland revival is the scale of its ambition, paired with an almost stubborn patience. There’s no flashy marketing campaign, no rush to shout the loudest.
“Talk’s cheap,” David shrugs. “We wanted to get it right before telling the world.”
Instead, word has spread the old-fashioned way: through friends, families, and the kind of guests who leave plotting their return. Ellie’s design, Oscar’s food, David’s vision, it all knits together into a philosophy that’s equal parts pragmatic and poetic. The passion, friendliness and charm flow through the staff, led by front-of-house maestro PJ Choroomi.
“We’re just trying to engineer comfortable places where people can come together,” David muses. “Less is more. We want to create spaces that people can melt in, laugh, share a fire pit or a dinner table. That’s how community happens.”
And if that sounds a little lofty for a country pub, well, so be it. The Ezrines aren’t just pouring beers; they’re planting gardens, fermenting sourdough, and quietly building something that feels as though it’s always been here.
“It’s long-term,” David says. “A lot of toil, hopefully joyful effort. But the end goal is a place with its own culture, its own feel, a natural fit.”
Crossing back over the bridge, leaving Kin Kin, the road continues into the hinterland and the pub fades in the rearview. What lingers though is the memory of a place shaped with care, grit, and a quiet kind of charm.
WANT MORE? You can hear a comprehensive chat with David Ezrine on our podcast, Everyone Has a Story.
