Nautilus Restaurant

Nautilus has been on the same Island Point Hill site since 1954, when Max and Diana Bowden (he a former British secret service agent, she first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II) opened it alongside Diana's shell jewellery factory — the only restaurant in town. Grahame and Jeanette Wearne have owned and operated it outright since 2004. The whole-coral-trout signature dish dates from John Haywood and Bill Austin's tenure in the 1970s; the Modern Australian register came in 1986 when Diane Cilento persuaded the Danish chef Mogens Bay Esbensen (later described as one of the fathers of Modern Australian cuisine) to leave his Sydney restaurant and run the kitchen here. The dining room is genuinely open-air — no roof, retractable canopies in the wet — set back from Macrossan Street down a hidden palm-lined path. Adults only. Closed annually through the worst of the wet season.