The best restaurants in Perth (plus a couple nearby)
These are the best restaurant in and around Perth, as reviewed for our annual Restaurant Guide.
Perth may be considered a sleepy capital city, but dining out in this city is anything but. With casual-cool Italian restaurants, sky-high fine-diners and playful new Greek venues, Perth has a small but mighty culinary culture that continues to hum along nicely, cementing that the best restaurants Perth has are well worth a visit. Plus, there are evermore Fremantle restaurants popping up just a short drive from the city, that still fires on all fronts.
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We’ve scoured the city and surrounds for the best places to eat, drink and celebrate Perth’s thriving dining culture. Here are the best restaurants in Perth and a couple venues nearby that are well worth the drive.
BEST RESTAURANTS PERTH
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.
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.
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.
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.
