Grand Orient is situated in the Melbourne Hotel on the corner of Milligan Street and Hay Street. Once you work out how to get in (we tried two doors before finding the actual entrance inside the hotel), you are transported to another world. The decor is traditional Chinese elegance, with muted lighting. Staff are very helpful, and on our visit there were plenty of tables celebrating special occasions, seemingly via the set menu with lobster and crab galore.
We chose the Peking duck with san choy bao. The duck is carved at the table, and the waiter makes up the pancakes withe crispy duck skin, cucumber, carrot, onion and hoisin sauce. It’s a real touch of theatre and we felt very spoilt.
San choy bao were beautifully presented, lettuce cups of seasoned duck with vegetables. Both duck courses were delicious. We soon noticed that pretty much every table ordered the duck – it’s obviously a speciality.
For the post-duck course we chose the deep fried prawns Hong Kong Bay style (with crispy chilli, spring onion, garlic). Excellent quality fresh prawns, with a perfect coating of batter and delicious crispy bits.
We also had Young Chow fried rice – very tasty with large prawns, barbecue pork, celery and egg.
We watched in awe as some of the larger tables were served delectable looking lobster with noodles, and a huge crab with Singapore style chilli sauce. The staff really go to a lot of effort to serve the food at the table, impeccably done with a flourish. All in all a very pleasant experience and much fancier than I expected. I will definitely be back to try some of the other dishes.
This unassuming little cafe sits in amongst the little shopping mall on Wisteria Parade in Edgewater. There’s always a friendly face to greet you and a nice selection of tables both inside and outside.
Their small brekkie is one of my favourite lunch options, it’s like a half serve of bread, sausage, bacon and egg with either beans or tomatoes, perfect for just a light lunch. Drinks are good too – the coffee is good quality and there’s a selection of nice juices.
On this visit I chose a bruschetta with a serve of mushrooms. Really good and appetising, with a nice proportion of onion to tomatoes, a drizzle of balsamic and a dusting of parmesan.
My partner chose the club sandwich, bacon, chicken, lettuce and tomato with a side of awesome chips.
This is one of our go to places, we go back again and again.
The menu has the usual breakfast options including avocado smash, eggs benny, granola bowl, omelette and French toast. For lunch there are breakfast options plus salads, fish and chips, nachos, bruschetta and sandwiches. On top of this there is a selection of savoury and sweet dishes in the cold cabinets – frittata, cheesecakes etc. so it’s a place that easily suits a breakfast, a lunch or a coffee and cake date. Consistently good and worth a try if you haven’t been before.
We haven’t visited the Matilda Bay restaurant for a long time (thirteen years). Looking back at my previous post the service was lacklustre and the food not very well presented, however I noticed that they were having a ‘Cray on the Bay’ promotion and I love crayfish, so we decided to try it again.
The location is perfect, right on Matilda Bay with yachts bobbing outside, the city lights in the distance, and wonderful doors that open up onto the view. We were seated in a nice booth. I ordered a glass of Eden Vale alcohol free sparkling wine, and set about looking at the menu. Nearly everything had a dairy free option – great for our dietary requirements. We decided on just bread and olives to start with the intention of enjoying the mains and maybe having a dessert afterwards. I asked for the bread to come with oil and balsamic instead of whipped butter, but the waitress said it comes drizzled with oil and salt. I would have preferred the oil to dip the bread, but this did not seem to be an option.
The bread was lovely, and lots of nice olives, although I really wish I had insisted on the dipping oil. My wine arrived too, but it wasn’t the Edenvale as advertised, it was McGuigan (equally nice), and there was no explanation about it being a different wine to the one that I ordered.
We were really enjoying the bread and olives, halfway through them, when all of a sudden our mains arrived and we had to quickly move the bread and olives out of the way.
My crayfish was disappointing, I expected a sauce or oil of some kind on it, but it was lumps of chilli, garlic and chives. It was also overcooked, same as last time I visited. I find that with dairy free options this often means removing the dairy item altogether rather than replacing it with an alternative. This really wasn’t a ‘sauce’ as advised, it was just dry ingredients. It would have been so easy to make a nice sauce with oil or a vegan butter or even a mayo.
My partner chose the market fish (dhufish) at market price ($69) with smoked baba ghanoush, beans and lavosh. The lavosh was like a thick piece of pastry and not really very good, so he left it. The fish was okay, but not tasty as you would expect from a fresh piece of premium fish at that price, the baba ghanoush was overly spiced and this was all that he could taste. Good baba ghanoush doesn’t need loads of spice, it’s all about the smoky eggplant, but this was sadly lacking.
Sides included duck fat potatoes, which were not that tasty. Duck fat usually adds so much flavour, but these were nothing special. There was supposed to be an aioli but I can only imagine that it had dairy and they removed it. It’s so easy to make dairy free aioli, but clearly not an option here.
The smoked mushrooms were the other side, nice meaty mushrooms, but not much evidence of smokiness. They must have removed the manchego crisp, but a little pangrattato wouldn’t have gone amiss. Another removal of an item rather than a replacement.
Anyhow we pressed on eating our mains and bread/olives at the same time, but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. Maybe they rushed us because we weren’t drinking alcohol and hence not a very profitable table? We finished with quite a lot of potatoes and olives left and asked for them takeaway only to be told that we were not allowed to take food away. This is the first time I have ever heard of a Perth restaurant declining takeaway. By this point I couldn’t wait to leave, and asked the waiter for the bill. He asked how the meal was, and we both were non committal, so he said okay there’s a problem and asked us to explain. We mentioned the lack of takeaway, and the mains coming up before we had finished the starters. I didn’t get a chance to mention the other issues because he went into quite a defensive explanation about how bread wasn’t really a ‘starter’ and they had this issue before with customers. He said that some customers liked to have the bread with their other starters and mains, some didn’t. I said okay, then if you’ve had this issue before why not learn from it? Why not ask customers when they want their mains? He said okay we have something to learn. When I mentioned the takeaway issue he said that they were not allowed to do this because of food hygiene and the inability to guarantee that the food would be eaten within two hours. It was a bowl of potatoes, not really a high risk item, besides, I don’t think any takeaway establishment can guarantee when people eat the food and how it’s stored, so I’m not sure why they were quite so resistant to this. He said we could have asked for a ‘doggie bag’ which was apparently a different option. By this point I was really fed up. He complemented both sides which was good of him, but the meal still cost $155.
Great view, great environment, still poor service and not much care given to cooking quality or dietary requirements. I will not go again, it’s too far to travel for a whole load of disappointment. I do hope they learn from this, but I doubt that they will change anything.
I have been to Wildflower before, three years ago, and didn’t have the best experience. I decided to give it another try this year for my birthday lunch. It’s now under the direction of chef Paul Wilson, and I liked the idea of the Flow lunch menu – two courses for $69.
We were greeted by a very enthusiastic waiter (who I think we met last time) and directed to our table. We had a view of the Swan (sort of) and it was a nice enough table.
I was happy to see that the drinks menu had some zero alcohol options and we chose a Pear and Ginger Spritz and a Sans Gimlet, both very refreshing.
We were served the most awesome sourdough to start. Great bread with a wonderful crispy crust. We were even offered a second round of bread which we happily accepted.
I liked the idea of having the kangaroo to start however it was the only dish that couldn’t be made dairy free, so I went for the crocodile tongue with kohlrabi, pepperberry and charcuterie XO which was very good. I wished I had saved some bread to mop up the sauce.
My partner chose the eggplant with bush tomato, samphire and kelp. This was good, fresh and herby, he enjoyed it.
For mains he chose the Wagin duck with cauliflower, toasted greens and Geraldton wax. This was an awesome dish, tender tasty duck with a crispy skin.
I chose the wild caught snapper with buttermilk, ikura caviar and sea parsley. I’m not quite sure how they made dairy free buttermilk, but the chef somehow achieved it. The fish was topped with some sublime oyster crackers which had an intensely oystery flavour (similar to some that Todd makes at Twenty Seats), and the whole dish was really good and well cooked.
We also had a side of pumpkin with pepita fudge, thyme and bayleaf. A good choice, although the only choice for us as the other options contained dairy (raclette and quandong/peach).
It was a lovely meal and we could have had dessert but chose not to (there was only one dairy free option), although I did try a zero gin and tonic – Lyre’s blood orange which was very good.
They gave me a sweet Happy Birthday plate with some strawberry gum petit fours.
Overall it was a good meal, with some stand out dishes and I would go back for more. I’d like to see more dairy free choices, and I would prefer that the drinks menu specified the variety for the alcohol free section – I thought they were gins but it wasn’t obvious. I would also ask the waiters to tone down their interactions a little – they seemed very keen and a bit overenthusiastic on telling us that everything was going to be wonderful, before we had even tasted it. This came across as a bit fake, but maybe they have been instructed to behave like this. They were quite sweet though, and helpful with our dietary requirements.
Truly Scrumptious 
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