It Just Has To Be Delicious

Posts tagged ‘Swan Valley’

Taylors in the Valley

Taylors is a favourite of ours in the Swan Valley. Not only is it right next door to the tempting treats of Whistler’s chocolate factory, but it’s a quirky art cafe with sculptures and paintings and tables nestled in amongst the creativity.

The menu is equally creative, with delicious sounding hotcakes, pulled pork benny, chicken and waffles, okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake), marinated mushrooms, sago pudding and many more carefully crafted options.

I chose the ricotta hotcakes with banana, lemon marscapone and biscuit crumb. Not only did it look amazing, but tasted very moreish all the way through.

One companion chose the chilli scramble, a lovely spicy plate of smooth scrambled egg on a roti bread.

My other companions chose the chicken waffle with poached eggs, chilli maple and smoky hollandaise.

Every dish was superb, and we all left the cafe with a very satisfied feeling. Taylors always delivers, come rain or shine, it’s one of Swan Valley’s finest.

Last visit – August 2023

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Restaurant review

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Sandalford Estate, Caversham

Sandalford is one of the best known Swan Valley vineyards, with quite an impressive land area and a lovely cellar door and restaurant area.

The menu is modern Australian, and the drinks menu contains every drink that you could imagine along with the selection of Sandalford wines of course. As it was lunchtime and several of us were driving, we didn’t go for a full wine tasting on this occasion.

Everything on the menu looked appetising and it was hard to choose, but eventually I went for the Exmouth tiger prawns salad with orzo pasta. This was absolutely delicious, great quality fresh prawns and really good flavours throughout.

My partner chose the pork belly with watermelon, radish and sherry vinegar. The pork was nicely cooked and the sweet melon offset the vinegar. A great plate.

We shared some sides of salad leaves and fried royal blue potatoes – all very tasty.

One of our friends chose the lamb shank with roasted eggplant, carrot, feta and date relish, and soft herbs. He loved the texture and flavours, and said that he would choose it again.

Another friend chose the pizza with prawns, nduja (pork sausage spread), zucchini and mozzarella. All pizzas are hand made fresh in a dedicated pizza oven and this one was as delicious as it looked.

Another winning dish consisted of figs with orange, heirloom carrots and caramelised nuts (entree size).

Desserts were spectacular and included a chocolate cube with tonka bean gelato:

A bomboloni Italian doughnut with coffee Frangelico semi freddo, macadamia and white chocolate:

A cassata of raspberry, coconut and mango:

A coconut gelato with berries and melon:

Everything we ate at Sandalford was delicious, the setting was great and it was a very relaxed lunch. Will definitely return.

Last visit date April 2021

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Fun thing to do, Restaurant review

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Chester’s, Henley Brook, Swan Valley

Chesters Restaurant Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Chester’s is in the heart of the Swan Valley – right here on our doorstep in Perth. The Swan Valley has so many cool things to do – you can wine and dine, there are breweries, you can buy German sausages and deli items, you can go cheese tasting, coffee tasting, nougat tasting, and chocolate tasting, and you can even play crazy golf. I haven’t had any really good wines in the Swan Valley – they all seem a little too acidic for my liking, but I know that they are quite popular, so if anybody can give me some Swan Valley wine recommendations, I would be happy to try them. Chester’s was no exception, we did some wine tasting before dining, and I didn’t find anything that really made me want to buy a bottle.

The occasion was a work Christmas lunch, and there must have been 30 people on
our long table. The rest of the restaurant was full – also with work colleagues from other departments, so there were approximately 80 to 100 people to be served. The measure of a good restaurant is one that can serve all of those people a meal that is hot, cooked well and tasty.
I chose the wasabi seafood salad to start which contained poached prawns, scallops, baby octopus and Shark bay snapper with wasabi mayonnaise, some crispy fried whitebait and lime and vanilla infused extra virgin olive oil. This was delicious – a very good start to the meal, and they didn’t skimp on the good ingredients.

chesters 1

For main I chose the seared and roasted pork fillet with a chestnut and caramelised onion stuffing, a sage and purple potato rosti and apple and verjuice jus. This was accompanied with perfectly cooked mixed vegetables – broccolini, button squash, mangetout, carrots and cauliflower. The pork was very tasty – my only disappointment was the rosti which didn’t go well with the dish – the flavour of the rosti seemed a bit strange.

chesters 2

For dessert I chose the sticky date pudding because it had the least amount of dairy ingredients. Sadly I had to give away my sheeps milk yoghurt ice cream, but the pecan toffee sauce was delicious.

chesters 3

Well I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch, and I think that my colleagues did too. The
coffee afterwards was also good quality, and they had soy milk for my dairy free diet which I found quite pleasing (not everybody caters for this).

Visit Date – December 2012

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The restaurant is now called Abbey

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Restaurant review

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Whistlers, Middle Swan

Whistler's Chocolate Company Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Whistlers is one of two chocolate factories in the Swan Valley. They offer a nice tasting selection of coconut rough, chocolate jelly snake and chocolate pretzel, and the dark chocolate orange slices are a particular favourite of mine.
On this particular visit we decide to try the cafe and I imagined that there would be a variety of chocolate cake on offer.
The cake selection was not particularly inspiring. I chose a dark hot chocolate to drink and a lemon muffin. My partner chose tea and a brownie.

Whistlers 1

The dark hot chocolate was good, served with two marshmallows, but as I got to the bottom of it, the glass was glued up with thick chocolate that hadn’t been mixed in properly. It was a shame because the whole drink could have been so much richer.

Whistlers 2

The lemon muffin was nice, but fairly ordinary. Same with the tea and brownie – the brownie was a little dry and not nice and gooey in the middle.

Whistlers 3

It wasn’t bad, it was just ‘ordinary’. We had a discussion about how they could make it so much better – they could become known for the best chocolate sponge cake in the Swan Valley, or the best churros or chocolate nutella doughnuts. Maybe the management will twig this and do something differently in future. I did notice a whole table of people having fish and chips – maybe this is a secret weapon that they have, but it didn’t look special, so maybe not.
It’s well worth a visit for the amazing range of chocolates on offer, and the cafe is okay for a quick cuppa.

Visit Date – May 2018

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Category:

Coffee shop review, Restaurant review

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