Eating out in Perth WA often means heading into the city. Our northern coastal suburbs offer wonderful beaches, lots of fresh air and a healthy lifestyle, but not much in the way of good restaurants.
Sometimes, we’ll even pack our bags and do a dirty stop-out for a night or two – like we did on the first weekend of June. It just so happened that our great friends Lynn and Kim (based between Yallingup WA and Singapore), were enjoying a touristy stay-cay in the city, complete with a walking tour and a cruise to Fremantle.
They would be at The Citadines. So Roy went online and booked us a studio apartment there too. It’s conveniently located at 185 St Georges Terrace. (Is it just me*, or are you wondering about the road name? I’d be surprised to learn that there were multiple saints with the same moniker. Ah… seems the Terrace was named after St George’s Cathedral, but the apostrophe simply became too hard.)
[*Roy: Yes, dear. It’s just you.]
Review: The Citadines, 185 St Georges Terrace, Perth WA
The Citadines is part of the Ascott group, perhaps slightly lower-end. It’s clean, convenient, and the staff at reception were all lovely. It cost around $200 per night for our studio apartment (Room 604) complete with kitchenette and a spa bath for me. Thanks, Roy!
Lynn and Kim’s “honeymoon suite”, a floor below us (503), had one of those large spa baths located in the bedroom itself. (Roy hates that, perhaps because there’s no possible escape from seeing me prance around naked.) Theirs had a view of the road rather than an inner courtyard, but was otherwise similar.
St Georges Terrace is the main arterial road that runs through Perth CBD. On a Friday afternoon it’s alive with the hum of city-workers grabbing lunch or starting the weekend early at one of the many bars and restaurants.
I had to pop into Zara, of course, up in Murray Street, and take a look in Forever New. I also had to stick my head into David Jones department store. But there’s not much shopping in Perth CBD that you can’t also find in the beautiful, newly redeveloped Karrinyup shopping centre – and that’s closer to home. It also has free parking. I suppose there’s little reason to come into the city at all if you don’t work here*. Still, I like the buzz.
Flashback: February 2022
Wait! There’s another great reason to come in to Perth: to join my beautiful friend Nanette and thousands of other like-minded citizens protesting the illegal mandates.
Wondering why I’m including this? It’s because I can.
The Heritage Wine Bar, Friday dinner
From The Citadines, it was a three-minute walk to The Heritage Wine Bar, located in the beautifully restored Royal Insurance Building at 131 St Georges Terrace. Here’s Chef Gord Kahle’s menu. I like that their beef is regeneratively farmed, chicken is free run, and fish is either line-caught or otherwise sustainably sourced.
Roy and I started with the excellently seasoned steak tartare, octopus and nasturtium ($29); Kim’s was the amberjack ceviche, macadamia and apple ($28), and Lynn’s the mushrooms, chestnut and garlic ($27). All were outstanding.
Kim was happy with his lamb, spinach, curds and whey ($56), while the rest of us enjoyed the hapuku* (fish), asparagus, mustard and squid ink. Also known as groper or grouper, hapuku (or whapuka) is named for a New Zealand river. In the interests of full disclosure, there was also a distinctly non-gourmet but irresistible side of chips, jerk salt and mayo for the table. (I like that expression: bread/chips/a jar of margaritas for the table! It implies a subtle distancing, as if I myself had nothing to do with it.)
By then, desserts to share sounded like a good idea. For our friends: chocolate tart, tonka bean cream ($22); for us, blueberry, meringue and licorice ice cream ($21).
We’d also drunk so much wine** from this celebrated wine list – not to mention a Pernod each, the bar being bereft of Roy’s current favourite, Ricard – that a nightcap at Kim and Lynn’s apartment also sounded like a good idea. It wasn’t, quite obviously: it was de trop, gratuitous and ill-advised. But we did it anyway.
*I thought the Tasmanian Holme Oak pinot noir should not have been preceded by Pernod, which totally overwhelms the tastebuds; the punchy shiraz that followed was a wiser choice. Best of all was the dessert wine – juniper cane cut riesling by the glass. Yum! (Total bill: $731.)
(Another option for dinner would have been the highly rated Rusty Fig [200 St Georges Terrace Cloisters], diagonally opposite our accommodation at The Citadines.)
Saturday Cruise to Freo (Fremantle) for lunch
A 10.45am departure from the lobby allowed our two Shiraz-ravaged men to sleep in for a bit, poor lambs! From here, it’s a 13-minute walk down Williams Street to Pier 3 at Barrack Street Jetty, where the Captain Cook Cruises river cruise to Fremantle ($45 one way) departs.
Close on 75 minutes long, it’s a great way to see the wide and wonderful Swan River and admire the desirable riverside suburbs and their eye-wateringly pricy houses.
The vessel docks on Victoria Quay, directly opposite E-Shed Market. After a couple of tries, I’ve sworn never again to eat at the abysmal E-Shed Market food-court. But the little café we found at the antiques and collectibles end of the shed looked promising, so we sat with our coffees in the sun for a bit before doing the 10-minute stroll into the centre of Freo.
Fremantle is of course Perth’s harbour town, with a colourful history of its own and evocative architecture to match. (Click here for one of my earlier posts about Freo.)
Gino’s Café and Trattoria, Fremantle
This gastronomic institution on Freo’s Cappucino Strip is the perfect spot for a hangover-blasting lunch. It’s so authentic – all the staff constantly gabble away in Italian – that if you can’t get a decent pasta here, you can’t get one anywhere.
Sadly, our Low Carb No Crap® lifestyle doesn’t include pasta. Instead, we had the sterling melanzane parmigiana (eggplant baked with napoletana sauce and cheese; $24). With no such restrictions, our friends polished off generous bowlfuls of fabulous spaghetti ($24-25) with bolognaise sauce (Kim) and napoletana sauce (Lynn).
We agreed there would be no wine. Just Pellegrino, thank you.
Freo Market…
… was packed, as it generally is on a weekend. All I ever buy here is the occasional bar of soap at Corrynne’s Natural Skincare stall, an outlet for her Dunsborough WA factory and shop. Today, all I wanted was a packet of addictive feijoas from the greengrocer guys. I seldom see these fruit, so they must be in season.
What are feijoa? Native to South America, they also grow in various tropical and sub-tropical areas. They’re green and egg-shaped, with a deliciously aromatic flavour halfway between ripe guava and sweet pineapple. Here’s a pic:
Persimmons are also in season Down Under. That’s the only time these delicate fruit are affordable, so I’m making hay while the sun shines!
Dinner at Mister Walker
Again, it’s a short walk from St Georges Terrace down to Elizabeth Quay Jetty, where a ferry takes you across the Swan River to the Mends Street Jetty in South Perth. It departs every 15 minutes, and the crossing takes less than ten. Amazingly, it’s part of Perth’s public transport system. So, as we’d bought a Family Rider day ticket ($10 for two grownups) earlier to get the train back into town from Freo, our ticket was valid for the ferry, too.
Mister Walker is located right on Mends Street Jetty, and is hugely popular for good reason. We arrived 20 minutes early, and as the table we’d booked was not yet available, the obliging maître d’ seated us outside, turned on a cosy heater, and made haste to deliver four Aperol spritzes.
I’m sure everything is delicious at Mister Walker, but since I discovered the lamb banjo sharing platter with roast veggies and cauliflower cheese at my first visit, it’s become impossible to order anything else. Succulent meat falls off the bone, and you take the rest of it home for another full meal. There’s always plenty left over. And at $72 per sharing platter, that’s really good value.
After two days of wining, dining and chatting, we said goodbye to Lynn and Kim in the lobby of the Citadines – with no suggestion of a nightcap this time, sensibly.
They’d booked a three-hour cultural and historic walking tour of Perth for the next morning, due to depart from Yangan Square at 9.30am. After Lynn’s glowing review of the experience, including their guide, I’m keen on doing that sometime. (Though possibly solo or with a friend, as the idea failed to raise enthusiasm in my husband.)
Now, we’re looking forward to us meeting up with Lynn and Kim in Yallingup next month, July, after Lynn gets back from Singapore. The Margaret River region can be lovely in winter, too – instead of surf and sand, it’s all about wood fires, wine tours and wrapping up warm.
But before then, we have another weekend in the city – this coming Saturday night, in fact – to celebrate daughter Blaire’s 40th birthday with her and about 16 others on a pedal car pub-crawl of Northbridge’s nightlife. Best of all, someone else does the pedalling. I’m already plotting a tequila-fest, so watch this space!
Postscript: HQ Bar and Restaurant, Quay Perth hotel
I had such a superb meal here last week with my Sydney-sider friend Lindsay (ex-Zimbabwe, ex-Singapore), that it would be remiss of me not to share the news.
Lindsay was in town for just a couple of nights last week after some amazing travel adventures up north that included diving and snorkelling Ningaloo Reef with her husband, Simon.
According to staff-member Lia, HQ Bar and Restaurant has been going for around six years; yet few people I know had even heard of it. It’s located on the rooftop (Level 10) of Quay Perth hotel, on The Esplanade facing the Swan River, and just a three-minute walk from Elizabeth Quay Train Station.
After ordering from an adventurous gin cocktail list, we had the set menu; it includes much of what we fancied from the generally Aussie-Asian fusion-style à la carte options and proved to be excellent value.
Being too busy jabbering to take and notes, I can only roughly describe the generous feasting menu ($69): fat tiger prawn dumplings and Thai red curry chicken skewers; braised pork bao and torched scallops; three main courses: Taiwanese braised pork pot, Thai-style barramundi fish, and a miso-glazed pumpkin slice that was out of this world; plus a crispy side salad and sticky rice. No dessert was included and none was needed.
