The Aussie state you should be visiting for food

South Australia is getting most of the attention right now, as it should be. The state is about to unveil its first-ever Michelin stars – in fact, Australia’s first-ever Michelin stars – which will be huge. No other chefs in the country have achieved that honour, and people are rightly excited.

So we will be talking about South Australia. But when it comes to food and wine, and travelling for food and wine, there’s also Victoria that’s often in the conversation. Tasmania, too, is huge. Even NSW, with its slew of new regional restaurants.

But what about WA? I’ve just spent a week in Western Australia – in Perth, Margaret River and Pemberton – reviewing restaurants and wineries for the WA Good Food Guide, and I can tell you, there are some great things going on out west.

You probably know already that some of our best wine comes from across the Nullarbor. But the food scene in WA is also thriving, with some talented chefs doing great things. I also tasted the best dessert I’ve had in a very long time at a Margaret River winery.

If you’re heading out west, this is where I would advise eating (and, to be fair, some I would advise avoiding).

PERTH

Tigerfish
My general position on pan-Asian restaurants is: they suck. There are very few people who can master the cuisines of five or six different countries and also make them sit together naturally on a cohesive menu. So I wasn’t sure how Tigerfish, right by the beach at Cottesloe, was going to go.
Fortunately, I needn’t have worried. Chef Steven Ryu knows what he’s doing, and in fact this breezy venue is dialled in across the board, from the lemon-and-cream décor to the beachy tunes to the dishes like Indian pani puri stuffed with fish tartare, banana-leaf fish with Thai curry, and Fremantle crayfish in spiced tomato butter. And if you just feel like a drink and a snack, the front bar has the best views and some great cocktails.

Post
Where are the good people of Perth going for their fancy dates? Some are at Post, an Italian fine-diner in the very stately State Buildings in the CBD. The waiters here are clad in black-and-white, the seating is formal and the clientele are dressed to the nines. The food is great too, particularly the beef carpaccio, which is the best of these I’ve tasted in a long while. I would probably skip the pork cotoletta – too thick, too chewy – and aim instead for the hearty pasta dishes, or a plain old steak. Decent wine list too, though very much Italian-heavy, without too many local drops.

Fallow
Over in busy Northbridge, this two-storey, three-section restaurant is all about steak. When you book you’ll be given a choice of four seating options: the Madame’s Parlour, the Butcher & Grocer, Chefs Table, and the Garden. It’s not always easy figuring out what each of these spaces will look like, but I went for the Parlour and it was a riot of various interior design styles, from industrial to Baroque and beyond.
Fallow is all about steak, with a choice of 10 cuts and styles. I have to admit, I didn’t love the food. My steak was undercooked, and the chips a little on the cold side. The cheapest steak here is also $70, and that’s a piddly 200g Angus fillet. Probably not where I would be spending my bucks.

Astral Weeks
If you’re in need of a pre-dinner cocktail, and you love good music played through expensive equipment, Astral Weeks is your spot. This place is modelling on the listening bars of Japan, with a huge analogue sound system and a vast library of vinyl. Everything is a bit serious here: the DJs look very serious, the giant speakers are serious, even the cocktail list is pretty serious (read: boozy). But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Egawa-An
I sometimes feel I’m maybe too harsh a judge of Japanese restaurants in Australia. I know how good Japanese cuisine can be, and I’m very familiar with the experience of eating in restaurants in Japan, and I so mark places on that basis. Which maybe isn’t fair.
Still, Egawa-An, a $180-a-head omakase place in the Perth CBD, fell well short. There’s no drinks list, and no prices given; only one sake a day opened, and the staff don’t know anything about it; the chef batch-making nigiri instead of serving each diner individually; warm beef served with a cold egg. I’d spend your money elsewhere.

MARGARET RIVER

Wayfinder
Margs has a fancy new winery, and damn, it’s impressive. From the entrance Wayfinder looks like a fairly modest building, but the most you explore the more it reveals of itself, the more you realise this is a cavernous building housing a very serious winemaking set-up, and a restaurant that I reckon is going to make waves on the local scene big enough to rival those of any Margaret River beach.
This is the work of Overstory, a wine and hospitality group that also owns Small Wonder winery in Tasmania. Wayfinder is a huge operation, with an organic vineyard, an onsite market garden, a cellar door and restaurant. I was only able to call in for a quick tour and a few snacks with wine, but going by the grilled asparagus with miso beurre blanc, paired with Wayfinder chardonnay, this place is going to be veeeeerry popular.

Wills Domain
OK, here’s the big shock: the dessert at Wills Domain. I have to admit I hadn’t even heard of Wills Domain before this visit, and I’ve been to Margaret River five or six times. That’s partly a measure of just how many great places there are to eat and drink in this region, but also indicative of the fact Wills Domain tends to fly under the radar in comparison to the likes of Vasse Felix and Leeuwin Estate.
But check out the “Donnybrook Apple”: a bed of tart sheep’s yoghurt, with spheres of fresh apple and tiny desert limes, piled with meringue shards dusted in pink pepper, with frozen raspberries and little sprigs of shiso. The balance of flavours, the play of textures and temperatures… really, really impressive. I loved everything here, in fact. Don’t miss it.

Leeuwin Estate
This is the big one, the icon: pretty much everyone is Australia with an interest in wine has heard of Leeuwin Estate’s Art Series chardonnay, and so a visit to its homeland should always include a glass or two. Fortunately if you book lunch at Leeuwin Estate you also get a free tasting, which includes a little sample of the famous chardonnay. Then sit down to your meal and choose a dish that’s paired with it, and away you go.
I really enjoyed my meal here, even if I was greeted at the door with, “Are you right there?” Always fun when you’re feeling a little uncomfortable already as a solo diner. But the food here is excellent, mod-Oz cuisine using local ingredients, cooked with skill, and the venue, with wide windows and tall, swaying gums outside, is superb.  

Yarri
I’ve always liked Dunsborough, the friendly, laidback town at the far northern end of the Margaret River peninsula, so it’s great to see some high-quality restaurants popping up there too. Yarri was the best that I tried, a fine-diner that pays homage to the south-west, with plenty of local ingredients and probably the most impressive wine list I saw all week.
I visited Yarri on a Sunday, when it does a pared-back two-course “Sunday Supper” set menu, which starts with a large array of crudites and crudo, before going on to a roasted lamb rump with caponata and duck fat potatoes. Great cooking, soulful and yet skilful; I’d love to go back and try the full menu.

Lady Lola
According to a few people I spoke to, the menu at Lady Lola hardly ever changes, though that’s good news for you because you’ll be able to get the Shark Bay garlic prawn risotto. That was the highlight of my visit to Lady Lola, a friendly wine bar and deli that’s pretty much next door to Yarri. Settle in here for some light snacks, some punchy cocktails, and then move on to risotto and wine and you’re living the dream.

PEMBERTON

Ampersand Estates
Here’s another new-ish winery on the scene, and just as impressive as Wayfinder. Ampersand Estates is the work of two accounting consultants who sold their Perth-based business to Deloitte and decided to open a winery and distillery outside Pemberton. They bought the site of the old Donnelly River Wines, and have put a huge amount of effort – and money – into revamping it and turning it into something amazing.
I’m not a huge gin guy, but the gins the Ampersand team are producing are seriously impressive, as is the wine, made by Rob Mann, who also runs Corymbia in the Swan Valley. Ampersand is now part of Ultimate Winery Experiences Australia, thanks to its immersive tour of terroir and tasting, and I would highly recommend calling in to experience it. Stay overnight if you can, and let on-site chef Andre Scheepers cook you a meal fit for a king.

THINGS I’VE BEEN LOVING THIS WEEK

• France is rapidly losing one of its cultural icons – but tourists can help save it.
• Singapore Airlines, which surely serves the best food in the skies already, has announced it’s introducing 100 new dishes to its in-flight services.
• WA Good Food Guide is now also the Tassie Good Food Guide! Great to see this fine state being covered.
• I didn’t want to love this news of Sydney’s Young Henrys brewpub moving into a bigger site – craft breweries are better when they’re small – but the collaboration with Plate It Forward, which helps provide meals for those in need, is a great move, and the Young Henrys remains independent, so really… bravo.

THINGS I HAVE NOT BEEN LOVING

• You know what? I’m going the keep it positive this week. Nothing to hate! Enjoy the weekend gang – happy eating, drinking and travelling.