The Cuckoo Restaurant, a small single-storey building, has high local significance for its long history as a popular Olinda restaurant. It became popular as the Quamby Tea Rooms during Olinda's tourist -boom years of the 1920s and 1930s, serving home-made cakes and scones, and take-away meals and sandwiches for eating at picnic spots. The former Quamby Tea Rooms was associated with the Dorey family from the first years until 1958, when the business became the Cuckoo Restaurant. It has been a major tourist destination in the Dandenongs for many decades.

The Cuckoo Restaurant is a single storey, Swiss chalet-style restaurant, dating from 1913, on the steep hillside adjacent to the Mt Dandenong Tourist Road. The building is dominated by a series of staggered gable roofs with an interconnecting gable end roof form marking the main entrance. The front of the building, set below the road level, overlooks the driveway only while the rear of the building over looks development to the east.

The rectangular plan building is clad with vertical timber lining boards and the tiled roof edged with scalloped timber boards. The windows have a mixture of plain and arts and crafts-inspired timber surrounds, with decorative hinges for the slatted timber shutters.

The building entrance is marked by an enlarged timber replica of a cuckoo clock which is clearly visible from the road.

Physical Conditions: Good

Integrity: Evidence of stages