THE National Hotel in Coleraine is beginning to roar with activity as new owners, Julie and Paul Kos, renovate it in preparation for a late February-early March opening.

The significant improvements involve remodelling the downstairs dining rooms, conference room, front bar and sports bar. In time, the upstairs bedrooms will all be elegantly redone, each with its own ensuite.

“We are really trying to create a beautiful, soft atmosphere where we are going to be putting pictures of agricultural work, so sheep, cropping, that is the bones of the hotel,” Mrs Kos said.

“We are really excited about the future it holds. There were people knocking at the door saying, ‘If you want us to organise a working bee, let’s get this done, we want it open.’

“They are desperate for it to open, it is their pub, it is not mine, it’s theirs. We never should forget that.”

While the dated interior is soon to be replaced – with the National turning 90 years old this year – there is nary a crack in the building thanks to its redwood stumps which have held it steady.

Mr and Mrs Kos have a successful egg farm near Geelong, but with rent doubling on their property, they felt it was time to look further afield, and renovating a hotel in Coleraine felt the perfect challenge to Mrs Kos, a former caterer.

“We are really excited; we have been more than welcomed by the Southern Grampians Shire,” she said.

“This brings all my skills. The person I am is the person in this pub. I just felt at home as soon as I walked in.

“I can’t believe it has sat idle.”

But the hotel will be more than just a hotel: it makes Coleraine the culinary centre of a new way of cooking.

Only a few years ago, Mr and Mrs Kos invented a chilled smoking technology that allowed eggs to be smoked raw in their shells, flour to be smoked both before and after it becomes bread, and for individual cuts of meat to be smoked.

One day people could buy a vacuum sealed cut of smoked raw steak and experience barbecued flavour from their frypan at home.

Their smoking facility has already been moved to the rear of the hotel and their unique products will be all over the menu.

The smoking process has the secondary and positive effect of killing all the bacteria in eggs, extending their shelf life around 35 weeks.

Chilling smoke also causes all the cancer-causing microparticles to fall to the floor, their process is safer than traditional smoking.

Mrs Kos bought her husband a smoker for a hobby, and they started experimenting with cracked eggs from their free-range run.

“This is the aha moment,” she said.

“My husband came to me and said, ‘I’m not smoking anymore’.

“His hands were yellow, he said ‘I smell like smoke … I do not think it is healthy for me’.

“I went to bed and I started crying.”

As she slept that night, she remembered a lesson learned when they lost thousands of eggs due to a temperature mishap – eggs are washed with hot water so the pores in the shell stay closed and stop it from absorbing impurities.

She realised chilled smoke would open those apertures to smoke raw eggs in their shells without cooking them.

After a year of trying to get it to work, her husband had given up, and the next morning she had cracked the case; she had promised to walk away if he failed on the next attempt.

A few years later, they have patented and sold that technology to Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, and the United States.

It might sound like magic, but the real magic is what will be happening in the hotel between Sundays and Tuesdays.

Mrs Kos once had a catering business and is familiar with the brutality and thanklessness of the hospitality industry.

She knows many chefs are burnt out and hurting and wanted to offer them respite.

The National Hotel will host regular free retreat weekends for chefs and their families; they will have the run of the hotel and we can relax and chinwag with other chefs.

The only payment them and their families have to make is to enjoy a degustation meal of their smoked products, which Mrs Kos is confident will quickly earn places in their restaurant menus – a fantastic quid pro quo.

“I have a lot of passion for chefs… people only talk to them when they are not happy with their food.

“I want to salute them, and if this works for us, what we are going to do is actually allow people that are bringing out new products make this a launch house.

“Chefs can keep coming back… and say ‘what is new now?’”