The best restaurants in Western Australia right now
These are the best restaurants in WA, as reviewed for our annual Restaurant Guide.
Advertisement
Casa | Mount Hawthorn
Most wine bars don’t temperature-control their entire inventory of organically farmed vino naturale. Nor are they designed like a modernist Milanese display home or staffed with service pros that are more hosts than hotshots. But then, most wine bars aren’t Casa: a house of hospitality with a grasp of enoteca cool and restaurant craft that have made it one of Perth’s most essential addresses. The menu – a thorough examination of chef Paul Bentley’s diverse CV – is tough to pigeonhole, but all too easy to like. House-made duck and pork cotechino, plus clam tonnarelli slicked with a lurid jalapeño and preserved lemon sauce, are pure Italian brio: just add cavernous slabs of focaccia and know scarpetta happiness. (See also the lush smoked pil-pil riding shotgun with pearly grilled cod.) A show-stopping millefeuille of roasted pears and whipped burnt-honey cream is another show of flour power, as is Casa’s cosy new pizzeria next door.
Evan Hayter is in a Margaret River state of mind. Still. As it was at the chef’s green-thinking restaurant, Arimia, homegrown is the maxim driving de’sendent: an intimate and soigné 40- seater with set menus that highlight his South West connections. Not only does it feel very now, but the low-lit room also feels welcoming thanks to the tight restaurant team and open kitchen. Charcoal-grilled Roe’s abalone gets lifted by fragrant anise myrtle. Sea succulents, pimento and macadamia butter crown a cracker made from leftover bread. Beefy wagyu flap confettied with fried curry leaves on a sunchoke béarnaise raises the steak. Juicy dhufish lolling in caramel beurre blanc turbocharged with the fish’s frame and head? Call it seafood Inception. While the cellar highlights WA talent, out-of-town cuvées aren’t overlooked: de’sendent is as much for locals thirsty for adventure as it is for regional visitors hungry for big-night-out adventure (and vice-versa).
When George Kailis commits, he goes all in. So, when the ambitious restaurateur pledges to build a landmark seaside brasserie and grill, the finished space looks every inch the big-night-out (or big-lunch-out) spectacle he promised. The ornate, palatial room is full of hand-finished details and a squadron of white-jacketed waiters; the heavyweight cellar is teeming with riches; and caviar and large-format beef tick the boxes for steakhouse opulence. Elsewhere, though, it’s the little things that denote Gibney as a house of both substance and style. Preserved chilli and smoked lardo electrify new-school oysters Kilpatrick, one of many assured seafood offerings on a menu that also includes a pissaladière, mussel escabeche on sourdough soldiers and grilled lobster with curried buckwheat. Meanwhile, elegant steak tartare flanked by fine-meshed pommes gaufrettes and a textbook brûlée-topped lemon tart embody the kitchen’s reverence for the classics. “Big” might be Gibney’s stock-in-trade, but the operation proves big can also be beautiful.
When the light (or second Negroni) hits just right, an evening at this date-night favourite can transport you to faraway places. Oysters, wickedly silky duck-liver parfait, terrine and other bistro hits taste straight outta Montmartre, while celebrated signatures (Duck frites! Crab toast!) and a buzzy three-tiered dining room feel more than a little Manhattan. But it’s the typically Antipodean one-two of spirited, unstuffy service plus the kitchen’s wry humour that confirms, oui, Le Rebelle is a French-Australian national helping make Mount Lawley’s resurgent Beaufort Street precinct great again. Kingfish loin and belly plus an oyster cream carefully set with fish roe and finger lime equals a colourful ode to the ocean. A meaty tranche of swordfish and pickled chicken hearts swimming in a glossy pepper sauce coolly flips surf and turf. Thirsty? French and local names happily coexist on a drinks list that’s both approachable as well as aspirational.
Dare we imagine Australia’s dining landscape without this pert(h) osteria channelling Italy’s north? It’s a frightening thought – although some Franciacorta, Barolo or another geographically appropriate libation should help calm the nervous system. For many, the appeal of this low-lit, high-voltage room can be chalked up to consistency. The comfort of dense meatballs suspended in lush polenta; gin-cured kingfish fragrant with juniper; and kickstarting dinner with country-style bread smeared with sugo. Others, though, embark on Lulu pilgrimages in pursuit of newer pleasures. Spiced muset sausage and fingers of pig’s head terrine wrapped in brik pastry reinforce a reputation for porky excellence: you’ll find these seasonal specials on the chef’s menu alongside thrilling pasta hit-outs such as elbows of sweet prawn camouflaged against oversized orecchiette. Whether you do the tasting menu or order à la carte, signature desserts – grappa-spiked tiramisù, say, or deep-fried twists of crostoli – and assured service are all but guaranteed.
For many, a knockout seafood restaurant near the water is the Australian dining dream. South Fremantle’s cheery Madalena’s Bar is the neighbourhood joint that brings that dream to life, all while remaining faithful to the area’s bohemian spirit. So while some will thrill at the cellar’s love of rogue winemakers, others will revel in more everyday pleasures including crushable tap beers, excellent fries and a terrific citrus tart for afters. Yet regardless of personal preferences, it’s the promise of some of WA’s finest seafood that lures diners. And the kitchen obliges with whiting given the all-star escabeche treatment; raw tuna ringed by ajo blanco and crunched up with pepitas; plus meaty barbecued dhufish wings slicked with chamomile butter. As accomplished as chef Adam Rees’s cooking might be, this is no fine-dining temple; the sandstone room, patio furniture and easy-going service are all reminders that a meal here remains a dream that’s firmly within reach.
There’s frozen yoghurt, and then there’s frozen yoghurt, Millbrook-style. Sure, the fro-yo tastes suitably lush and guilt-free, but it’s the accompanying coulis made from molten, over-ripe persimmon pulp – a seasonal, gardeners-only treat only available to those that grow their own food – that makes this dessert unmistakably Millbrook. While vineyards, forests and a man-made lake are the estate’s most visible assets, it’s the kitchen garden that exerts the strongest influence on the plate. A glut of late-autumn veg becomes a rich ratatouille sauce for flat iron steak. Grilled pumpkin sharpened with berbere spice holds its own against juicy roast pork. Cannonballs of braised oxtail are offset by a jumble of plump borlotti beans and a fleet-footed lentil and banana-pepper salad. Although Mother Nature calls most of the shots, it’s the obliging service, value-packed estate wines and other human touches that make lunch at this destination cellar door restaurant (still) so essential.
Nieuw Ruin? More like safeguarding old classics, or at least in the kitchen where the Nordic and CWA focus of menus past has been replaced by a rekindled love of old-school Europe. Sometimes chefs Blaze Young and Stephen Chen keep it classic: an elegant pork, duck and chicken pâté en croûte, perhaps, or textbook gateau Marjolaine. Other times, liberties will get taken. Gougères get reinterpreted as puffs of choux sandwiching dense cheddar and rosella cream, while tender ruby snapper gets primed with a herby bouillabaisse-flavoured mousseline, poached in butter, then sliced and arranged on a bed of devilled crab meat set afloat by lobster oil. Despite its new French accent, this easy-going wine bar hasn’t forgotten its roots; the nostalgic, heritage-listed cottage setting, towering Norfolk pines and laidback service are all uncut Freo. A wine list offering everything from exciting newcomers to big-ticket Burgundies (plus the offer of snappy cocktails) reinforces the all-are-welcome attitude.
Despite the whims of vintage, seasonal tourism and dining trends, this landmark Margaret River cellar door restaurant constantly delivers, time after time, long lunch after long lunch. One of the bedrocks of this consistency is champion hospitality: the handiwork of waiters that have bought in wholeheartedly to Vasse Felix’s strong service culture. Chef Cameron Jones’s cooking is equally exacting and obsessed with detail. A Japanese-style beef-cheek-and-lardo croquette gets finished with threads of crisp-fried gai lan and a peach tonkatsu sauce. Crunchy potato noodles with a warming ginger oil are played off against supple toothfish sauced with kombu-spiked béchamel. An oyster blade steak arrives accessorised with purple tapioca jewels poached in estate shiraz. (Clever, although the benchmark house wines fare even better in the roomy stemware.) While the kitchen has a global outlook, the snug upstairs dining room and downstairs Janet Holmes à Court gallery reiterate the Australianness of this vital wine country address.
Where there’s a Wills Domain, there’s a way to inject some special into any Margaret River weekend. The crisply designed cellar door restaurant and vistas of vines set the scene, as do steadily evolving estate wines. Equally progressive are the assured, sharply plated dishes that populate both the à la carte and dégustation menus: all strong signs that the relationship between culinary director Jed Gerrard and chef de cuisine Sergio Labbe is blossoming. Raw scampi cloaked in a pale kombu cream and cured scallops sharpened by tosazu are two ways seafood might get Japanese glow-ups. A low-rise of luscious wagyu beef cheek and crunchy warrigal greens suggests the kitchen handles turf as well as it does surf. Still not convinced? Peep the subtly op-art arrangement of celeriac in a cloudy Cambray sheep’s cheese broth, showered with finely grated truffle, or the earthy sweetness a glassy pane of sunchoke brings to lush chocolate mousse. Glorious.
