Nestled in amongst the Manning community and shopping centre, Hiyori first came to my attention when I found out that they serve a Teishoku Japanese lunch. Great value, for around $30-38 depending on your protein, you get a tray with rice, protein, pickles, tamagoyaki (egg), soup, dessert (usually mochi), and a serve of tea – choose from hojicha, sencha, matcha, and genmaicha. Proteins include miso cod, koji salmon, sashimi, wagyu, and yakitori, and the whole meal is a wonderful experience. While you decide, you get a small bowl of beans to snack on.
On our first visit we chose the miso cod. Great good quality cod with a delicious miso sauce. The soup had a chewy dumpling which made for an interesting texture, the egg was smooth and tasty and the pickles wonderful. Mochi dessert was green tea, which had a slightly bitter coating and a slightly sweet soft jelly texture. The sencha tea was first class.
On the second visit I chose the wagyu roast which came with a soy dip. Again, top quality protein and the mochi was a mango flavour which I preferred to the green tea version.
My partner chose the Koji salmon, again a lovely good quality protein.
On our next visit we decided to try dinner and it was an absolute treat. Everything we had was good. We started with a kingfish crudo, probably my favourite dish.
Then tuna tataki with a lovely chilli oil ponzu sauce and grated radish.
Next came the shio teba chicken wings with yuzu koshu, umeboshi paste and mayo – so moorish and addictive.
Next the sticky belly pork chashu with miso and red onion salad. A little fatty for my tastes but the lean meat tasted amazing.
Then last the okonomiyaki stack – japanese pancake with bacon and cabbage
Dinner didn’t disappoint. Bookings are recommended, Hiyori gets busy and there’s a good reason why.
Last Visit October 2025 Click here to find out more
What could be nicer than tempura and rice? Tendon Kohaku have a mouthwatering list of choices and “tendon” is a portmanteau of tempura and rice, nothing to do with connective tissue!
The menu include a range of tempura, there’s the Kohaku that includes prawns, chicken, corn, beans, shiitake mushroom, pumpkin and runny egg tempura; then there’s the prawn lover one that is purely tempura prawn; there’s also wagyu versions, veggie, and eel. The choice is yours and you can order additional side dishes of tempura if you wish. Each set comes with sauce (classic or spicy), pickles, miso, chawanmushi (savoury egg custard), and wasabi. You can choose from white rice or multi grain rice, and you can add tencha tea if you like to pour tea over the rice.
There are other dishes available such as katsu curry, and udon noodles, and a variety of soft drinks, usually tea based.
It’s all extremely well organised, but can get incredibly busy at weekends, so the best plan is to get there early and order early.
On this occasion I chose the soft shell crab tendon with tencha:
Everything on the tray was delicious. The wasabi nice and strong, and the variety of things to eat made it a really enjoyable and interesting meal. I definitely want to come back and try the other tendon options.
I think that Como Garden is fairly new. I saw some posts on Instagram and the food looked amazing so we paid the restaurant a visit after a Sunday morning park walk. It’s on Melville Parade just across from the freeway and overlooking the Swan River. There are tables both outside and inside, and we were seated fairly quickly. We chose some food from the trolleys but also ordered some items that I had been looking forward to. The restaurant makes it’s own dumplings and many of them are signature dishes.
First choices were Har Gow (prawn) and Scallop dumplings from the trolley.
For steamed dumplings these were probably the best we have ever tasted. You could really taste the scallop, it wasn’t mixed in with prawn, and the Har Gow were packed with prawn, absolutely delicious. I usually order my Har Gow with Sui Mai because they traditionally go together, but decided to save room for other tasty dishes.
Next came glutinous rice dumplings Ham Sui Gok (affectionately known as footballs). If you haven’t tried these, you really should – they are usually minced pork with veggies, and the signature Como Garden version have preserved vegetables in them. They were also really light and not stodgy like others can be. Very very good footballs.
Then came the signature brown rice flour rolls stuffed with prawn in cruller pastry. Such a lovely version of rice flour rolls (which can often be all roll and no filling), and with a nice soy dressing.
Finally one of our favourites – fired radish cake in XO sauce. So umami, beautiful soft radish cake with a crispy edge, and a burst of XO flavour. Probably the best radish cake I have tasted.
Como Garden oozed quality from start to finish, even the jasmine tea tasted better than other restaurants (and $1 per person – not like the $4 per person I have been charged at Emperor’s Kitchen). Every dish was delicious, with generous fillings, quality ingredients, what’s not to like? I’ll be back.
Next to Pier Street car park in Perth is a little alley called McLean Lane. If you didn’t know about it, you wouldn’t know it’s there but it’s a bustling little touch of Tokyo with Teppanyaki bars, and right inside is a tiny twelve seater restaurant called Ginza Midai. The menu is quite small, but the dishes are all carefully thought out by chef Midai. It’s quite expensive for the amount of food that you get, but the food is top quality. There is also a selection of wines, sake and beers.
The waitress went through the menu recommending dishes to us and we chose four things. The restaurant is so tiny that most dishes are passed across the counter as there’s not a lot of room to manoeuvre. The first dish we chose was an anago and smoked radish potato salad.
It was quite unexpected. I thought it might be a leafy salad with potato and eal, but it was more like a regular potato salad with cold mash, anago eel and iburigakko (smoked daikon). Very tasty.
The next dish was the assorted sashimi, which looked amazing and I was really looking forward to trying. The plate contained sea urchin, scampi, scallop pudding, two types of tuna, squid, white fish and seaweed paste. The fish was super fresh and very good quality. I’d never had sea urchin before and found the flavour quite intense. The scampi and tuna were the stars of the plate.
Next came sukiyaki, another new dish to me that was reminiscent of a steamboat in other cultures. We had a burner placed in front of us with a very hot clay pot of broth, tofu, greens and mushrooms. We were given a plate of premium wagyu with some extra chopsticks for the raw meat, and instructions to dip the meat in the broth for ten seconds then dip it in the rich egg yolk sauce. We followed the instructions and also drank the broth and ingredients with our ladles. The meat was incredibly good and the egg yolk sauce very special.
The last dish was a bowl of rice cooked in scallop broth with dried scallop and ikura (salmon roe). Again very tasty and nice fresh roe.
Well this restaurant was definitely an experience and I wish I had tried the Oden (vegetables in broth) that I saw other customers trying. I think if you are looking for a real Japanese experience, it’s a good place to try.
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.
Rym Tarng is a little Thai restaurant in amongst the shops at Bicton Central. It’s unassuming with a relatively small menu, and you get the warmest of welcomes as you walk in.
We came for the pork and prawn donuts, which were lovely, but we were blown away by the delicious spring rolls, larb, and massaman curry.
Here are some pics:
Spring rolls – juicy and delicious – definitely not your average spring roll.
The famous pork and prawn donuts – lovely but larger than I expected and they filled me up.
The larb was well balanced – sour, sweet, and full of flavour, and it had some soft chewy noodles included which were a pleasant surprise.
Massaman beef curry – rich and full of flavour with shallots and sweet potatoes
Rice
That was a yummy meal, definitely worth the journey.
Allegria is a family run cafe, in the Ocean Reef shopping centre on Constellation Drive. As part of my quest to find Perth’s best Sunday roast, we decided to give Allegria a try. The roast is available from 4pm on Sundays, and there’s a Happy Hour between 5pm and 6pm.
Allegria is about much more than Sunday roasts, it’s a cafe, open from breakfast through to dinner, and has a wood fired pizza oven. They host theme nights (a recent one was a mexican night), and Paul the owner boasts that they make amazing coffee along with the tastiest pizzas around.
We dined for the roast beef and it was nice to see that the menu included other options – we could have also had chicken, pork, snapper or a beef rendang. There seems to be something for everybody. The wine list as also good, and I started with a prosecco, my partner choosing a lemon lime bitters.
When the lady took our order the overriding feeling was that this is a restaurant that cares about its customers. She explained everything really well, and we anticipated our roast beef with excitement. The ambience was really chilled and the young girls next to us were tucking into a delicious looking pizza, while the couple the other side were enjoying some very generous and yummy looking desserts.
When the plate arrived it didn’t disappoint. The beef was incredibly good quality, really tender and perfectly cooked. Accompanied by carrot, greens, broccolini, roasties and a superbly mutant yorkie it was delicious from the first mouthful to the last. We didn’t have to ask for sauces, we were given horseradish and hot mustard. One very minor criticism – I prefer to pour my own gravy, but luckily this was nicely distributed just as I like it.
Sadly we didn’t have room for dessert, but we will be back to try their other offerings and for several more Sunday dinners. This is the winner – Perth’s best Sunday roast!
Last visit – we’ll be back but this visit was September 2023
Truly Scrumptious 
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