Sunday 21 December 2008

Getting chillie

"The most common way to test chile pungency is to taste the pod, this method, although quick and cost effective, may leave the tester in some pain."
Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University.

"Woman Wins But Men Do Well."
Headline of The Daily Times Herald of Dallas, Texas describing the outcome of a chilli cook-off in 1952.

Indiscriminate lover, elephant repellant and arthritis cure. The chilli is certainly a versatile little fellow.
Containing more vitamin C per weight than citrus fruit, the chilli (and here I'm opting for the oz spelling, although depending on where your cultural heart lies you might go for chile, chili or chilly) are also extremely good for you.

Part of the solanaceae (nightshade) family, they’re related to potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant. More specificlly, they're a member of the capiscum genus, which includes paprika, bell peppers and, of course, the common capsicum.

Chillies were officially discovered by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the New World back in the late 1400s, although Mexican Indians were munching on them as early as 7000 BC.

By 1650, cultivation had spread from South America to Europe, Asia and Africa. Today, India is the world's largest producer of chillies and most of the dried chilli finding its way into Australia is from this source.

The chilli is the undisputed tart of the vegetable world, dropping its pollen for anyone within the genus and in the process producing so many hybrids that, today, there are well over 200 varieties on the market as well as any number of as-yet unclassified types.

Add to this the complication of regional nomenclature and the way some chillies change their name when dried (the chipotle is a dried red jalapeno; the ancho a dried poblano) and you have yourself a right old dog's breakfast.

Not that dogs actually eat chillies. They, like other mammals, are repelled by capsaicin - the chemical which gives chilli its distinctive hot, peppery taste.

Interestingly, birds lack the pain receptors necessary to 'feel' capsaicin and consequently eat chillies quite happily, distributing the seeds in their faeces far and wide just as clever old nature intended.

For many years, the only chillies available at the local supermarket were long reds or long greens - generic names for a range of biggish, relatively mild chillies which you still see sold loose at supermarkets.

Fortunately, though, most chains are following the trend set by Perth's specialty fresh produce outlets and now offer a range of loose and pre-packed chillies along with consumer information on variety and heat level.

The amount of heat in a chilli is measured in two ways. The Scoville test involves diluting a sample of chilli with water until the heat can no longer be detected by the taster. This dilution ratio is called the Scoville Heat Unit.

The most accurate method for measuring a chilli's pungency is HPLC, or High Performance Liquid Chromatography. For this procedure, chilli pods are dried then ground and the capsaicin is extracted and analysed. Either way, you end up with a heat rating which is most usefully converted to a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the hottest.

Most of Australia's chillies are grown in Queensland, although one of WA's largest distributors, Brent Mews of Brejuls Herbs (the company is named after Brent and his wife, Julie) says he sources 90% of his chillies from farms around WA including Carnarvon, Geraldton, Gingin, Wanneroo, Pinjarra and a few in the South West.

Chillies grown in WA and available fresh from retail outlets around Perth (with heat ratings given in brackets) include the big, mild chillies sold loose in supermarkets - usually caysan, laser or anaheim (3-4); the ball or cherry chilli (6); jalapeno (5-8); birds eye (9) and the oh-so fiery habanero, which is rated at 10+ and, depending on its ancestry, ripens to red, orange, yellow or chocolate brown.

Given the changes wrought by climate and growing conditions - the hotter the climate, the hotter the chilli - these ratings are, at best, approximate.

As a general buying guide, chillies in their green, unripe state are milder than when fully ripe - which is not to say all green chillies are mild, but that within a variety you can usually bank on the green being milder than the red.

Despite our preoccupation with their heat-giving properties, chillies also contribute considerable flavour. Fresh green chillies add acidic, capsicum-like top notes and distinct surface heat while red chillies tend to have a more rounded flavour and a more developed heat.

Even greater variation in flavour is found in the dried varieties, which offer a full-bodied, fruity, raisin-like sweetness and varying degrees of tobacco and smokiness.

Ian Hemphill is a second generation herb grower and the owner of Herbie's Herbs, which sells the largest range of herbs and spices in Australia. In Spice Notes (Macmillan, $35.90) - his definitive guide to growing, buying and using herbs and spices - Ian has this to say about dried chillies:

"The flavour of dry chilli is quite different to fresh, in the same way as a sun-dried tomato has a different taste to a fresh one. Upon drying, caramelisation of the sugars...creates more complex flavours." Ian has a big range of dried chillies for sale, all available by mail order via the Herbie's website - www.herbies.com.au.

The world of the dried chilli is just as fraught with ambiguity as its fresh counterpart. Take cayenne pepper, for instance. There is such a beast as the cayenne chilli – they're grown extensively in Queensland – but the cayenne pepper sold by companies like Masterfoods and Spencers (two of the main players in the retail dried spice game) is actually a blend of various chillies and may contain no cayenne at all.

As the spice buyer from Masterfoods explained, the heat level's the thing. "We want to make sure our customers can buy a jar of cayenne powder time after time and always get the same level of heat."

The story is similar for chilli powder or ground chilli which, again, is usually blended from a variety of chillies aimed at achieving a certain level of heat.

Traditionally, cayenne pepper is the hotter of the two - in the Spencers range, the ground chilli rates a 6 and the cayenne pepper an 8; at Masterfoods, the cayenne is almost twice as hot as their chilli powder.

Chilli flakes and crushed chilli usually average out at around the same heat rating as chilli powder, but offer slightly more in the flavour department as well as an aesthetically different experience via the inclusion of seeds and larger pieces of chilli.

The heat of a chilli comes not from its seeds but from the fibrous, pith-like membranes which surround them - officially called the placental tissue. These membranes contain the capsaicin glands, and while the seeds themselves do not produce any capsaicin, they do absorb some from the surrounding tissue - particularly during the drying and crushing process.

My own tests with a mild long red proved this point: the seeds and flesh really did hold no heat to speak of, while the fibrous membrane was extremely hot. (Many of the chefs I know still reckon scraping out the seeds of a chilli reduces its heat. I can only postulate this works because the scraping-out process also rids the pepper of its capsaicin-rich membranes.)

Many people steer clear of wine when eating chilli-based dishes, but several wine varieties work really well. The drier style of Gewurtztraminer stands up to chilli heat, as does unwooded chardonnay and any youthful, aromatic riesling. When it comes to reds, I'd opt for one of the fruitier pinot noirs or a grenache. Zinfandel, too, is good with chilli, its juicy, cherry-like flavours marrying perfecting with spicy food.

When it comes to the preparation of really hot chillies, take a leaf out of the professional chef's book by wearing plastic gloves and removing the seed debris under running water.

If you do get chilli burn, the best way to ease the sensation is to eat dairy products or something containing sugar. Yoghurt and milk both work well as does a solution of water and sugar, but don't be tempted to drink just water - it will only intensify the sensation of heat.

If you get a chilli burn on your skin, try soaking it in milk - this seems to alleviate the burning. If you're unfortunate enough to get chilli in your eyes, the only thing to do is repeatedly rinse with water or saline.

Friday 19 December 2008

Duck you

A bit of background on me and ducks
I used to breed ducks on a hobby farm in Dardanup just south of Bunbury.

Not that my then husband and I were much cop at the self-sufficiency thing. First came The Great Eggplant Glut of 1988, followed closely by the fateful day I injected myself with Tasvax Five-in-One sheep vaccine and spent an anxious few hours praying for the Poisons Information Line to get back to me to confirm whether or not it was a live vaccine as I waited for the symptoms of Black Udder and Barber's Pole Worm to emerge.

I did, however, get to see one hell of a lot of ducks – dead ones mostly, dangling from our Hills Hoist after a run-in with the pointy end my father-in-law's axe.

Because we were city slickers and foolishly sensitive about such things as abattoirs, we came up with the idea of giving our animals names to remind us of their ultimate purpose in life and hence, I guess to lessen the trauma to us when they eventually joined the Choir Invisibule.

There was Sweet the pig and her brother Sour, (steak) Diane the cow and Al the stud muscovy duck, who was actually a permanent fixture but nonetheless named after that most famous of French retro classics, duck a l'orange.

Duck a l'orange (the dish, not the duck) has been around since the days of Catherine de Medici, an Italian noblewoman who moved to France in 1533 to marry the future Henry II and widely credited with introducing the sophisticated food of her homeland to the bourgeois French.

These days, no self-respecting French cook would be without his or her favourite recipe for duck a l'orange. Anne Willan includes a recipe for duck with orange sauce in Basic French Cookery, the book spawned by her famous Parisian cooking school, La Varenne.

More recently, the internationally renowned French chef Paul Bocuse, who famously championed the cause of nouvelle cuisine in the late 20th century, included a recipe for braised duckling with orange in his landmark publication The New Cuisine.

Larousse Gastronomique also gets in on the act, calling the dish Canard a l'orange Lasserre after the exclusive Paris restaurant of the same name which serves the dish to this day.

This State's biggest distributor of game birds is Mahogany Creek, and while the company processes a few bigger ducks – muscovies mostly – around Christmas time, by and large the duck which finds its way onto Perth tables is the Pekin – a fast-growing, fine-fleshed bird ready to eat at eight weeks with a dressed weight of 1.4-2kg.

Ducks in this size range feed two to four people, but for the purposes of duck a l'orange I've suggested you go for a No.15, or 1.5 kg, bird and allow a half per person. As to buying your duck, Mahogany Creek Managing Director Terry Fawell says we need to look for an even-coloured skin and a nice, plump breast. If the breast bone is protruding, it usually means the bird is too young and will lack both flavour and meat.
(From 9-12 weeks the birds are growing small pin feathers which can't be machine-plucked and are a pain in the proverbial to remove, so breeders tend to process their ducks before this stage.)

Cooking duck a l'orange
There are two quite separate things going on in duck a l'orange and it's useful from an ease-of-cooking perspective to consider them separately.

First there's the cooking of the duck itself, which is roasted more-or-less conventionally but with a decent dollop of butter for flavour and a lot of turning and pricking during the cooking process to ensure a nice crisp, golden skin.

Then there's the orange sauce, which can be made almost entirely in advance and is sometimes referred to as sauce bigarade, although this is technically correct only when Seville oranges – a rarity here in the West – are used.

It's important to taste your sauce as you go – you want a balance between the tartness of the juices, the sweetness of the caramel and the savoury richness of the stock. It was also Erwin's idea to whisk in some butter at the end, adding a luxurious satin gloss and a pleasing creaminess to the finished sauce.

I find it also helps to think of the sauce ingredients as flavour-based building blocks. There's the caramelised sugar bit, the stock bit, the citrus juice bit and, of course, the booze bit. Each of these components can be prepared in advance and finished off with the pan juices while the duck is having a little lie down after roasting.
And because good stock is integral to the success of this dish, I've included a really simple recipe for veal stock and urge you to give it a go – it will make the world of difference to your duck a l'orange.

Which is more than can be said for Al the stud muscovy, who tried to mount the chickens once too often and ended up doing the Hills Hoist shuffle with all the rest.

Somebody should've told him to duck.

Eat me's step-by-step guide to classic duck a l'orange
Serves 4

What
The duck
2 x 1.5 kg ducks
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter

The sauce
45g caster sugar
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
700 ml veal stock
Juice of three oranges
Juice of one lemon
Four oranges extra.
Pan juices from the duck
One tbsp Grand Marnier or brandy
75 g cold butter cut into cubes.

How
The duck
1. Pre-heat oven to 425F/220C.

2. Wipe the inside of the duck with paper towels and pull away any loose pieces of fat. Cut off the first wing joint.

3. Lift the neck skin and cut out the wishbone – this makes the breast meat easy to carve in neat slices. Prick the skin all over with a fork, paying particular heed to the legs and neck cavity. And remember the golden rule: lots of pricks.

4. Season the bird inside and out with salt and pepper and tuck a thick slice of orange into the cavity. Smear outside with butter.

5. Lie the duck on its side in a baking dish and roast until it just starts to sizzle - 15 to 20 minutes should do it.

6. Remove from oven, baste with pan juices and tip off excess fat. Turn duck onto other side. Return to oven and continue roasting for another 20 minutes.

7. Remove from oven, baste with pan juices and tip off excess fat. Turn duck breast-side up, reduce oven to 200C and roast for further 30 minutes.

8. Remove from pan, cover loosely with alfoil and allow to rest for 15 minutes.

9. Pour off all remaining fat from pan, reserving the pan juices for the sauce.

The sauce
It's not a bad idea to do this a bit in advance, while you're still capable of speech.

1. Peel the four whole oranges with a sharp knife, being sure to remove every skerrick of white pith. Holding an orange in one hand, cut down towards the core on either side of the segment walls, easing each piece of flesh gently from the orange. The idea is to end up with a pile of orange segments free of membrane. Repeat with other three oranges and put to one side.

2. Retain the peel of one orange, pare off the white of the pith, cut the orange-coloured peel into fine (julienne) strips no wider than a matchstick – even skinnier if you can manage it. Cover these with a little hot water and one teaspoon of sugar and boil for three minutes until softened. Drain and set aside.

3. Put the sugar and vinegar in a deep, heavy-based pan and cook over a very low – repeat – very low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Continue to cook until you have a bubbling, deep golden caramel.

4. Immediately pour in the veal stock, orange juice and lemon juice, stirring well.

5. Turn up heat. Continue cooking and stirring until the caramel has fully dissolved and the sauce boils.
6. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 35 minutes, giving it a stir every now and then and skimming the surface to remove any scummy bits.

7. Add the pan juices to the sauce and simmer for a further 15 minutes. Sauce should now be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon lightly. If not, cook a little longer.

8. Add Grand Marnier or brandy and cook, stirring, for a few minutes more without boiling.

9. Pass the sauce through a sieve and season to taste with salt and pepper. If you're serving it immediately, whisk in the butter and, once melted, add the drained orange segments and julienne. Otherwise add the butter and orange only after the sauce has been reheated, right before serving.

To serve
Cut duck into two halves and arrange on warmed plates. Spoon over sauce, making sure everyone gets a few bits of orange. Serve with whatever takes your fancy – most root vegetables work well with duck.

You want to make your own stock, you mad creature, you? Here's a classic, lightish veal or beef stock perfect for the duck.

Veal stock
What
2 kg veal or beef bones, sawn into small pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic
2 carrots, sliced
1 leek, sliced
3 sticks celery, sliced
2 tblsp tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
6 black peppercorns

How
1. Preheat oven to 220C. Place bones in a baking dish and sprinkle with oil. 2. Roast for 30 minutes.

3. Turn bones over, add garlic and vegetables and roast for another 30 minutes.

4. Tip contents of pan into stockpot, being sure to scrape out any bits from bottom of pan and adding these to stockpot.

5. Add tomato paste and cold water to cover. Bring to simmering point.

6. Skim well, and when no more scum rises, add herbs and peppercorns.

7. Simmer uncovered very, very gently for eight hours, skimming and adding extra water to cover as needed. (The idea is to slowly cook the bejesus out of the ingredients so that all the flavour ends up in the liquid.)

8. Strain and cool, pressing down on debris to extract as much liquid as possible. Leftover stock (this recipe will make around 2.5 litres) can be kept in the fridge for three days or frozen.

9. Allow stock to cool and remove fat from surface.

Note: Never add salt, children. Once stock has been reduced further in the sauce recipe, it may well be salty enough but you won't know until it has, so don't. You can always adjust seasoning once sauce has been sieved.

Faces to watch 2009

They came, they saw, they had a nice cup of tea. Here is my far from definitive list of Perth's dine-out movers and shakers for 2009...

Kevin Pham
Chef and co-owner, with wife Mei, of Nham Thai, Perth's only mod-Thai diner. Love it.

Lousia Iacopetta
Her Guildford cafe Me-n-u just gets better and better.

Kate Lamont and John Jens
What a pair. Committed, professional and great fun to boot.

Michael Forde
Who knows what the entrepreneurial chef-owner of Cantina 663 in Mount Lawley will get up to next?

Rochelle Adonis
Her nougat, cake and ice cream shop serves coffees, too. There goes the diet.

Una Hosgood and Vince Soresi
Galileo, their Shenton Park ode to all things wood-fired, shows just how good honest, simple food can be.

Hadleigh Troy
Chef and co-owner of Restaurant Amuse and heir apparent to Perth's King of Fine Dining crown.

Rob Broadfield
Notwithstanding the occasional whiff of Eau d'Arrogance, Rob is far and away WA's best food writer.

Russell Blaikie
Set to make his mark on the south-west dining scene with newly-opened Must Margaret River in what used to be VAT 107.

David Coomer
The bloke's a legend. First Star Anise, now a watch-this-space tapas joint to be opened on Stirling Highway. Can't wait.

2008 Christmas round-up

As a child, the lead-up to Christmas was a time of intense excitement and ridiculously high expectations, followed by a brief flurry of wrapping paper, the annual re-run of White Christmas on the Beeb and a gorgefest that lasted the best part of a week.

Then I came to Australia and discovered a very different kind of celebration fuelled by sunshine, Webers and rather a lot of beer.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s just that Christmas is the time I miss my mum and all her rituals the most.
Mum began her Christmas preparations several months before the big day. By October, she’d made the puddings. In November, the cake was baked then prodded full of holes with a knitting needle and fed whisky every week.

She even made her own mincemeat, with suet of course, and the meal itself was timed to coincide with the Queen’s speech so that we could pause, mid-mouthful, and toast mum’s favourite monarch.

Dad always played in a band on Christmas Eve. When he got home at gone midnight, he stuck on a santa hat and wellies with cottonwool glued around the top, lest we woke up, and delivered stockings to the end of our beds.

I’d never seen as dark and mysterious a Christmas pudding as my mum’s until last week, when I paid a visit to the newish Rochelle Adonis shop in Northbridge.

Rochelle is a trained pastry and is best-known for her various flavours of sexy nougat.
As well as her deeply rich, tar-black Christmas puds cooked, says Rochelle, in a bain marie for 17 hours, our very own Nigella is selling spiced Christmas shortbread and bite-sized mince tarts flavoured with warm spices and hints of ginger.

Rochelle is also doing a ripper brandy and vanilla bean ice cream also available, unchurned and unfrozen, as a sublimely rich, eggy, ready-to-heat creme anglais.

If it’s a Christmas cake you’re after, pay a visit to For The Coffee Table in Floreat.
A friend was given one of their cakes as a gift recently and served it up for morning tea. Wonderfully moist, chockablock with quality fruit and with a nice boozy hit, it is quite the most beautiful Christmas cake I’ve ever tasted.

After some other tempting treats for the table this yuletide? New Norcia Bakeries in Subiaco and Mount Hawthorn make their own pan forte and another sweet treat called Pan Chocolatti, heavily laced with nuts, honey and chocolate.

The Grocer in Nedlands has lots of Christmas goodies including a Celebration Box stuffed with all the festival niceties.

If you’re after a duck, goose or other fancy game there’s still time, but only just, to order one from meat distributors Mahogany Creek.

And if you’re feeding the hoardes, The Herdsman in Churchlands does a great seasonal fruit platter, while Kailis Bros (Freo and Leederville) will make up a fresh seafood platter to order.

This Christmas I’m off to Scotland to be with my family. This includes my dad, who continued to do the Christmas Eve dress-up and stocking thing right up until I left home at the age of 22. God bless ‘em all.

The Herdsman, 9 Flynn St. Churchlands. Ph 9383 7733
Kailis Bros, 101 Oxford Street Leederville. Ph 9443 6300
New Norcia Bakeries, The Cloisters, Bagot Road, Subiaco (opposite Crossways Shopping Centre), Ph 9381 4811
Mahogany Creek, Ph 9249 2866
The Grocer, 145 Stirling Hwy Nedlands Ph 9389 8144





jane cornes
office (08) 9271 9071
mobile 0414 862 306
http://www.doris.com.au

History of Margaret River

There was a day— blue skied, sparkling with promise sort of a day on the cusp of a south-west summertime twenty years ago—when I parked my rusting mini-moke outside the tasting shed at Pierro and paid owner Mike Peterkin a little over four bucks a bottle for that weekend’s-worth of Guillotine Red.

Today you’ll hand over rather more for Peterkin’s much-awarded chardonnay and you’ll do it in considerably finer style. A grape’s throw from his original old shed, its windows cataracts of dust and web, stands a tasting facility as handsome as you might expect from Western Australia’s most significant (for now at least) wine-growing region.

But back in 1965—the year in which John Gladstones’ seminal report, The Climate and Soils of Southern WA in Relation to Vine Growing was published in the Journal of the Australian Institute of Agriculture—Western Australia’s only commercial wine-growing region was the Swan Valley, just north of Perth, and Margaret River was just another also-ran timber and dairy town struggling to find its economic niche.

What Gladstones’ research indicated was that the soil and conditions in the “west coastal area south of Busselton”—a region which, roughly speaking, encompasses the landmass between capes Leeuwin and Naturaliste, stretching from just south of Busselton, through Margaret River and south almost as far as Augusta—lent themselves to the production of high quality table wines.

In a follow-up report published in April 1966, Gladstones was even more specific, stating that the “establishment of (a) wine industry centred on, say, Cowaramup or Margaret River would have a number of practical advantages.”. These findings echoed the words of Professor Harold Olmo, a Californian horticulturalist who visited Western Australia in 1955 and who, in his report A Survey of the Grape Industry of WA, found the future of the grape-growing industry lay not in the hot, dry Swan Valley but down in the State’s cooler south. (Admittedly, Olmo favoured Mount Barker in what we now know as the Great Southern but, to be fair he never really got much of a chance to inspect Margaret River, famously passing through en route to a dinner appointment in Busselton and, upon enquiry, being told by a Department of Agriculture employee that the region “lacked obvious promise”.)

In the Beginning
The history of the region might usefully be divided into four distinct parts. First came the European pioneers who, having arrived in Augusta to farm in the 1830s, didn’t much like their chances amongst all that tall timber and, over the next decade, made their way up between the capes towards Busselton. Then came the timber workers, who did their job so thoroughly that, by the turn of the century, wood from south-west forests was being used to pave the streets of London.

In 1920, the British and Australian governments’ Group Settlement Scheme saw thousands of immigrants arrive—not the most successful of initiatives given that, eighteen months later, half of them left again due to the hardships involved.

Apart from the odd sly-grog shop, these early settlers had bugger-all to do with the making of wine but paved the way for it nonetheless, clearing vast tracts of land—usually by hand—and populating the satellite communities which were later to feed the township of Margaret River itself. Around the same time at the Busselton end of the region, Italian immigrants and assorted others who’d emigrated after the Boer and First World wars eked out a living any way they could—planting potatoes, working on the railway, establishing farms.

And, finally, came the period which began in 1965, when a report by John Gladstones encouraged the making of wine in—and, in turn, burgeoning commercial success for—the region.

History Re-written
"Margaret River is one of the fairytale successes of the Australian wine industry. A centre for dairying, fishing and fine produce, there were no grapes grown here only thirty years ago." Australian Wine on Line

Upon such popular myth is the Margaret River legend founded. It’s easy enough to see why—to precis the truth so; to exclude those who came before ensures predominance of our own WASP heroes.

But let’s throw another name into the ring: Jimmy Meleri. Meleri was part of the immigrant invasion of the early 1900s and joined his fellow Italians in making wine long before you could buy anything other than fortifieds locally. But Meleri took things one step further and sold what he made at local dances (for a bob a bottle, reportedly) and from the farm gate, making him—not Tom Cullity, who founded Vasse Felix in 1967—the region’s first commercial wine producer (a fact, by the way, which Cullity would be first to acknowledge.)

Meleri owned a property out on the Willyabrup Ridge planted vines there in the early 1900s, close to where the Happs winery now stands. “It’s an exquisite piece of land for growing wine grapes.” says Ernie Lepidi, manager of the vineyard planted on what used to be Meleri’s property and, coincidentally (or perhaps not when you think about it) the son of one of the region’s early Italian immigrant farmers. Lepidi tours the property with me and tells how his father and Meleri drank together; of being sent down under the house for more wine where it was “cold as a fridge”.

Another of Meleri’s contemporaries was a third Italian immigrant—the father of Albert Credaro. Credaro junior was born in Busselton in 1928 and still co-owns Vasse River Wines at Carbanup on the northern end of the Margaret River appelation. “Everyone knew Jimmy Meleri’s place. They used to buy flagons there for two shillings.”

It’s hard to imagine a Margaret River region before wine, but Credaro does. In the 1930s, only a “small, winding gravel road” linked Busselton to Margaret River and everyone travelled by horse and cart. Even Credaro, who lives a fifteen-minute car ride away from Busselton, visited the town just twice a year. “To give you some idea, there were still only three, maybe four motorised vehicles in the whole of Busselton and nothing much at all in Margaret River.”

Not that Busselton was exactly a thriving metropolis when Tom Cullity et al—Bill and Sue Pannell of Moss Wood, Kevin and Di Cullen of Cullen’s—hit town in the late 1960s. “Back then, our idea of a big night out was walking the Busselton Jetty.” Remembers Pannell, who sold out to Keith Mugford in 1984 and now owns Picardy vineyard in Pemberton. “There was nothing else to do back then except go to the pub. If we wanted a really big night out we’d drive to Bunbury (Western Australia’s second city, eighty-five kilometres north of Margaret River) for a hamburger.”

(For anyone who’s interested, the link between Jimmy Meleri and Margaret River continues at Vasse River Wines, where Albert Credaro is growing cuttings taken from vines planted at his father’s place in Busselton which, in turn, grew from cuttings taken from Meleri’s original vineyard. The resultant grapes—known variously as “Fragolini” and “Fragola” depending on who you talk to—grow nowhere else in Margaret River and end up in Credaro’s cleanskin red which sells by the carton for around $9 a bottle—a small price, I’d say, for a glass of history.)

Tom Cullity
“Somebody decided, once, that a block of vines needed spraying. I don’t think they had any idea what they were spraying for, it was just something you did. By the time the order got passed on to the person who did it, they used a spray designed to treat a disease in pigs. You can imagine its effect on the vines.”
Tom Cullity, A Vision of Fine Wine

It’s around 40 years since Tom Cullity, a Perth-based cardiologist who passed away in 2008, planted his first vines at Vasse Felix, thus leading the vanguard of contemporary winemaking in the region.

By the time John Gladstones’ initial finding were published, Cullity had actually already planted half an acre of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz near Burekup, a hundred or so kilometres north of Margaret River. The idea, he says, was to make a small amount of wine in a cooler area. Having spoken to Gladstones, and spurred on by Houghton’s winemaker Jack Mann and WA Government Viticulturalist Bill Jamieson, Cullity decided to try his luck even further south and spent the Winter of 1966 looking for suitable land.

The following interview took place in the early noughties, in what I imagined was his study. It is re-published in its original format.

Tom Cullity is a still-strong, succinct and vibrant man of seventy-six, with a wry, dangerous sense of humour, a firm, unwaivering gaze and strong, shapely forearms. He neither suffers fools gladly nor minces his words and, interviewing him, I find myself treading a fine line between admiration for his intellectual depths and fear at the fall which awaits should I put a foot wrong.

Cullity’s a scholar, and an eloquent bugger at that. He has the largest Oxford English I’ve ever seen and has just come up for air after fourteen years’ translating the journals of French explorer Louis de Freycinet. First, though, he decided to lift his linguistic game to heights sufficient for the task at hand by completing a BA in French. He was fifty-eight. (The resultant book, a beautiful, cloth-bound creature titled Reflections on New South Wales, has just been published by Hordern House and is doing rather well, considering it sells for around $350 a pop.)

In 1967, with the help of Di and Kevin Cullen who owned one hundred acres in the region since 1956 but had not yet got into wine, Cullity purchased eight acres in the Willyabrup Valley and named the vineyard Vasse Felix. It cost him $185 a hectare. In August the same year, he planted unrooted cuttings taken from the Swan Valley—riesling, cabernet sauvignon, malbec, shiraz. Against all odds, ninety-eight percent of them took.

Over the first two years, the busy cardiologist averaged the 600 kilometre round trip from Perth to Willyabrup more than once a fortnight, rising at 3am and leaving town in his Peugeot 403 to start work by 8am, returning late on Sunday night. Cullity spent all his holidays at the property, usually alone, and acknowledges it was a kind of madness. “I had never been south of Bunbury (Western Australia’s second city, eighty-five kilometres north of Margaret River) in my life, had no practical bent, had never changed a car tyre, did not know what a weed was and knew nothing about vines or wine-making.”

For five years until a house was built, Cullity lived in a sixteen by six metre galvanised iron shed. His first vintage, in 1971, was a disaster due to bunch-rot and silver-eyes but in 1972, Vasse Felix produced a riesling which created quite a stir at the Perth Show. It and the publicity that surrounded it got Margaret River noticed. In 1973, Cullity employed David and Anne Gregg to manage the property, eventually selling to them in 1984 (“I didn’t like having to sack people, I didn’t like delegation. It was time to move on.”). In 1987, the Greggs onsold to the Holmes a Court company, Heytesbury, which is still the owner.

Cullity says he’s visited Margaret River perhaps three times in the last fifteen years and doesn’t miss it one bit. Sometimes he wonders, though, whether all that early effort was worthwhile and will, he says, never forget the exhaustion and disappointment of those times. (“I sat in a ruddy tin shed for the first five years. People forget that.”) But at the time he felt driven to prove a point. “It was blatantly obvious somebody would have to plant vines in a cool area sooner or later. It seemed almost a disgrace that nobody was actually doing anything to prove a golden opportunity that would be the envy of most other countries.”

Coming of Age
“We had a man who wanted two hundred cases of pinot. When he asked the price, we said $150, meaning the wholesale price per case. He thought we meant the bottle and didn’t seem to think it was unreasonable.”
Di Cullen, A Vision of Fine Wine

Within three years of Tom Cullity planting his first vines, two other families—Bill and Sandra Pannell, Kevin and Di Cullen—had joined him, forming a triptych which was to set the scene for everything that came after.

Pannell, a GP, had already visited Victoria, met with Max Lake in the Hunter and talked with Ross Heintz at Seppelts about Olmo’s published work. Heintz agreed with the good prof that whites would go well at Mount Barker, but ventured an opinion that Margaret River (he actually specified Cowaramup) was the go for reds. This fitted in with Pannell’s plans perfectly. His parents owned a holiday home in the region and in 1968 he began, as he puts it, “poking around, looking for land in the area”.

Eventually, Pannell found what he wanted and asked the owner, Jack Guthrie, if he’d consider sub-dividing a bit off. Guthrie was a bit unsure, but his father (a real old patriarch called “The Sheriff”—they bought him a bulldozer for his eightieth birthday) was all for it. Showing a foresight uncommon amongst his peers, Guthrie senior told his son if he wanted the area to prosper, it would be a good idea to give the wannabee winemakers a chance and, in 1969, the Pannells bought six and a half hectares at $800 a hectare, and began planting vines.

The following year, Pannell started a medical practice in Busselton, which he shared with friend and neighbour Kevin Cullen. Like Tom Cullity before them, Pannell and Cullen knew little about growing grapes and even less about making wine. Unlike the commuting cardiologist, however, their intention was always to live close to their vines.

Cullen and his wife Di had already sought advice from John Gladstones on the growing of lupins at their Willyabrup farming property and Gladstones had persuaded them that grapes, not lupins, were the way ahead. Accordingly, in 1971 they planted just over four hectares to cabernet, riesling and traminer. Their first vintage—the 1974—was a bit of a dog; the 1975 substantially and encouragingly better. Then the 1976 won golds at various east coast wine shows and their 1977 riesling won best dry white in the Canberra show in the small winemaker’s section.

Already a groundbreaker in a literal as well as figurative sense, Di was also the first woman to win a trophy at the Perth Royal Show and pioneered the use of oak in sauvignon blanc in Western Australia (youngest daughter Vanya, who took over winemaking in 1989, continues the tradition.) “We liked what our friend Robert Mondavi was doing—much better than the grassy stuff that comes out of the tank,” Di told me at her home in Willyabrup, where she lived after Kevin died in 1994 of Motor Neurone Disease. “Mind you, back then I only left it in barrel for three months—I was too nervous to leave it any longer. These days we give it much longer.”

Sandra Pannell, too, was as involved as her husband in the day to day running of the winery. “When someone important was coming down—we met the most incredible people: Max Lake, Len Evans, Bill and Eileen Hardy, Robert Mondavi—I’d talk to Anne Gregg (by then with husband David managing Vasse Felix for Tom Culllity) and we’d entertain them between us. She’d do lunch, I’d do dinner.”

“We sold vine cuttings—45,000 of them once—and with the money I bought an ice cream maker and a pasta machine. It meant that when we had VIPs I could produce elegant three-course meals—lemon sorbets, home-made pasta, that sort of thing—for next to no money, which was just as well because we had none”.

The Pannells were also experiencing success on the wine circuit. In 1976, the Moss Wood Cabernet won three gold medals and two silvers at the Perth Royal Show. Pannell, a modest, happy man at ease with himself and the world, was also the first in Margaret River to plant semillon and remembers with evident pleasure how, on a subsequent visit to Burgundy, he visited friends for a wine tasting with Robert Joseph. “I asked if anyone would mind if I opened one of our semillons. It blew Robert Joseph away. He said it was one of the greatest wines he’d ever tasted.”

Keith Mugford, the current owner, began working for Moss Wood in 1979. By 1983 there was talk of he and his wife, Claire, taking over, says Pannell. “We had a young family. I was still practising with Kevin in Busselton and between us we were looking after the whole of the local population and also trying to make and market our wine. I hadn’t had a holiday in five years and basically I was burnt out.” A year later Mugford bought Moss Wood with the help of the Pannells.

Today the Pannells live in Dalkeith—another of Perth’s lovely riverside suburbs (and, coincidentally, less than a ten minute drive from what was Tom Cullity’s place), spending half their time at their beloved Picardy vineyard in Pemberton making Burgundian-style pinots and remembering, if pressed, the days at Moss Wood with a blend of nostalgia and relief: “nostalgia because we met so many great people, had so many good times; relief because it was such bloody hard work!”

Around the same time our three medico musketeers were getting down and dirty in Willyabrup, Chateau Xanadu founders John and Eithne Lagan were responding to an advertisement in the British Medical Journal; for doctors, in Margaret River. The Lagans arrived from Dublin in 1968 to find a town where the only cultural establishment was the public library and there was serious talk of closing down the hospital.

(The Pannells may have found life in burgerless Busselton a bit on the quiet side, but the town was a veritable hive of activity compared to Margaret River, where the dairying industry was struggling, the population was declining fast and the future looked bleak for those who remained.

Things were so bad that, in an echo of group settlement days, some folk had committed suicide. Others just upped and left town. Hard to imagine such a scenario within living memory, particularly given the town’s current state of commercial promiscuity; harder yet to imagine how it felt for two erudite European doctors arriving to start a new life with three young children.

Eithne Lagan says she cried for the first year: “I thought the best thing I could do was to save up to go home again”. However, after encouragement from Tom Cullity (“who appeared covered in muck and dirt… and told us to acquire land for viticulture, but to do it properly…”) they, indeed, acquired land—much of it virgin bush—and eventually planted their first vines in 1977.

Slightly quicker off the mark was David Hohnen, who founded the township’s first winery, Cape Mentelle. Hohnen—still part-owner of the winery which, in turn, is part-owned by Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin—had studied winemaking at Fresno, California and planted his first three hectares (“mostly to cabernet with a bit of riesling and various other odds and sods”) in 1970. It took a few years for the winery to go into fullscale production due to problems with birds, management and lack of irrigation. “We struggled along, sold a bit of fruit and finally went into production for ourselves after five of six years,” remembers Hohnen. “Today you’d do it in three.”)


Modern History
“There’s absolutely no way I could have envisaged what we have today, not in my wildest dreams.”
David Hohnen, Cape Mentelle.

By the time Margaret River drifted into my consciousness and I into its brine-thickshake surf in 1981, there were more than twenty vineyards in the region and you could do the slurp-and-spit Fandango at perhaps a dozen of them. Mind you, there was little in the way of tourism infrastructure and a big night out was still the $12 roast chook dinner, with all the sweets you could eat, at the Old Dairy restaurant in the grounds of historic Wallcliffe House.

Visit today and you’ll have more than four dozen eateries to choose from (including more good ones, per capita, than in the Perth metro area) and around fifty-five wineries doing cellar sales (I’d be more specific but new ones keep opening). Add to this a bunch of wannabee others doing the mail-order-only thing, over 3,000 hectares under vine and, in 2001, an annual crush of just over 27,000 tonnes. These days, in a bums-on-seats kind of world, the words Margaret River on your wine label guarantee a full house.

Pivotal to the development of wine tourism in the region was the creation of the Leeuwin Estate concert, in 1985. Seven years earlier, owners Denis and Tricia Horgan had launched the winery at a party for 150 on the front lawn of the winery. “The comment we heard again and again that day was ‘you know, I’ve never been to Margaret River.’ What that concert did was show 5,000 people just how good the region was.”

The enterprising Horgans had already tried, without success, to get the WA Symphony Orchestra down to the winery to play (“They told us professional orchestras didn’t play in the bush!” laughs Tricia Horgan), so when Festival of Perth director David Blenkinsop asked them to underwrite the cost of bringing out the London Philharmonic Orchestra to Western Australia, they agreed on condition it did a gig at Leeuwin.

First though, Tricia Horgan approached the local shire: “Out of courtesy more than anything. I’m not sure we really needed their approval”. Any hint of incredulity here would be entirely forgivable, given the Leeuwin concert brings $10 million worth of revenue into the town on an annual basis and has included performances by the likes of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Shirley Bassey and Ray Charles, giving Margaret River an international profile.

The other major catalyst in terms of national awareness of the region was Cape Mentelle’s back-to-back Jimmy Watson wins, in 1983 and 1984. “Wolf Blass had done such a good job publicising the Jimmy Watson after he’d won it that it was in the forefront of the national wine psyche,” remembers David Hohnen. “Winning twice on the hop like that endorsed the winery big time—still does to some extent. It marked the legitimacy of Margaret River as a producer of great reds and gave the region as a whole a huge boost in confidence. It really made a huge difference.”

John Gladstones — the John Gladstones, an eloquent, sanguine gem of a man who lives in City Beach—is currently preoccupied with the updating of his highly acclaimed book Viticulture and Environment, sees the third wave of evolution for Margaret River as commencing around this time. “But if you wanted to name an actual year as a kind of coming of age for a region, I’d say about 1990. It’s really only since then, in my opinion, that the wines have fully come into their own—they really went up a notch—and in sufficient quantities to allow for wider distribution and a greater public awareness.”

The fourth and final wave, then, has been the swell of what sometimes gets called “mass production”—a misnomer which riles Sue Jackman, CEO of the Margaret River Wine Industry Association, no end. “The region produces just one percent of Australia’s wine, the vast majority of which in turn comes from wineries with an annual crush of under 1,000—hardly what you’d call mass production!”. By far and away the region’s biggest producer is Evans and Tate which, tellingly, moved its main operations from the Swan Valley in time for the 1999 vintage and last year crushed around 7,500 tonnes.

Other, older, players have increased plantings in the last five years, notably Cape Mentelle, Chateau Xanadu and Vasse Felix, all of which crushed in excess of 2,000 tonnes in 2001. Then there’s Palandri—by no means a big producer but with a major planting program and all the commercial nouse and infrastructure (serious marketing objectives, serious budget, seriously in-your-face cellar door facility smack-bang on the highway) to be exactly that.

All these expansive goings-on are worn somewhat uncomfortably by those who came to the region early and have chosen to stay small. There’s a certain frisson in the air; a sense of protectionist disquiet about what increased production will do the region’s reputation as a producer of premium wine. Gladstones is all too aware of this burgeoning groundswell of opinion—“a powerful angst” as he puts it—but sees expansion as the way ahead. “It’s one of the things in my studies that I’ve been trying—fairly unsuccessfully until more recently—to get across. That we ought to be expanding.”

By way of reassurance, Gladstones proffers Burgundy and Bordeaux. “The wines from these regions which people talk about, rave about, are a drop in the bucket of what’s produced there. Large amounts of bulk wine is made too, but it doesn’t stop people talking about the good stuff.” Indeed, the decidedly non-elitist Gladstones believes more and bigger producers is just what Margaret River needs.

“I’ve always said that if the environment suits the cultivation of high quality grapes, then it should not only be for your Chateau Lafites or Cullenses, but for bigger scale commercial production. And if the quality of the grapes is there, it seems to me entirely sensible that bigger scale producers should also benefit from the environmental conditions, rather than going out in the middle of the desert somewhere and irrigating.”

Gladstones says we should think of it in terms of a pyramid—the wider the base, the higher the potential for its peak. “It also means that, given the region’s superior conditions for grape-growing, perhaps in future we can get good quality but affordable wines that people like me can afford to drink!”

Given the region is heading way beyond its Bordeaux doppelganger tag and excelling at decidedly non-Bordeaux varieties—notably chardonnay and shiraz—there’s a whole varietal lolly shop waiting to be explored and Gladstones can’t wait. He cites Erl Happ’s work with nebbiolo, sangiovese and tempranillo as being particularly exciting, but there are others—like Janice McDonald from Suckfizzle and Mark Lane of Flying Fish Cove—who are bringing a fresh approach to what Margaret River is all about.

But surely, I ask Gladstones, he harbours deep within himself just a little bit of paternal angst as he watches the small child he helped create head off to play with the big boys? “Not at all. In a broad sense Margaret River is going where it needs to, to become a significant wine region. What we’ve had up to now in terms of the market is minute. I believe the whole of our south west has a tremendous future—that it is potentially one of THE great wine-producing regions of the world.”


Domenic Garruccio
I interviewed Domenic in the late 20th century. He was a lovely man. Here is the interview in its original format.

In the north-eastern corner of the Margaret River appellation, inland from the Leeuwin-Naturalist ridge, lies a sub-region called Jindong and, with it, an increasing number of wine-growing concerns, including the large and rather glamorous Lionel’s Vineyard owned by Evans and Tate.

A few clicks further north and, still within the appellation—in a physical sense at least—lies the antithesis of what Margaret River has become, but a reminder of what it once was; Boallia Wines, the region’s oldest surviving vineyard. It’s owner, Domenic Garuccio, is expecting me but is not entirely sure for what. Do I want wine? Why do I want to talk? Everyone visits him to talk, he says, but no-one buys the wine.
So first I buy wine. And then we talk.

We sit across from each other at a glass-topped wooden table surrounded by the flotsam of his life —a dog-eared print of Jesus, Christmas cards, a “Don’t Drink and Drive” sign, framed photographs of Garruchio as a younger man—and drink our wine from sherry glasses with an Anzac biscuit on the side. There is no spitoon.

Domenic arrived in Busselton—the region’s main commercial centre slightly north of the appelation—in July 1949. A native of Calabria, he was twenty-four years old, couldn’t speak, read or write English but knew how to grow stuff—potatoes, oranges and wheat mostly, but also grapes. Everyone in Calabria knew how to grow grapes. First off he dug potatoes and sold them for two shillings and sixpence a bag. After two years, his wife joined him from Italy and, together, they slept on potato sacks on the ground until they could afford to build a house.

When he’d saved two hundred pounds, he went to the bank manager, who queried where an immigrant like him—a “New Australian” as he was known by the locals—had got so much money. “Digging spuds from four in the morning to eight at night,” Domenic told him with what must have been barely disguised indignance. It took another four years to persuade the bank manager to lend him enough for the sixty hectares he still owns at Jindong. It was virgin bush. He cleared it by hand.

By now Domenic was missing the sort of wine he drank back in Italy but, as was the fashion, he found only fortifieds at the local hotel. The Italian wine-makers near Perth sent down a barrel by train every now and then, but it was expensive and supplies were sporadic. So in 1950, he planted the grenache and red prince vines which still guard the front of his property. You pass them on the way in and they’re absolute monsters, their hefty, sinewed, arms stretching out along the wire.

Domenic made his first vintage by crushing the grapes in forty-four gallon drum cut in half and pouring the juice straight into bottles. He didn’t go commercial (a misnomer if ever there was one—the vineyard in none of the region’s tourist literature and there’s bugger-all road signage even now) until 1987, planting cabernet sauvignon and more grenache, and producing his first vintage in 1992.

Domenic stores his reds (a cabernet sauvignon and Boallia Red—a grenache blend sourced from the fifty year-olds out the front and his later plantings) in racks made from cyclone fencing at the back of the corrugated iron shed which doubles as a tasting facility. In March 2002, he turns seventy-eight. At weekends, he opens to the public and sells to those who can find him. If no-one comes, it doesn’t matter so much. He likes being out there in the fresh air, amongst his vines. These days he’s too tired for much else. “Five years ago I feel twenty-four” he tells me. “I feel so good that if I go dancing, I do it on one leg while everyone else use two. Today if I try it, I fall over.”

When I met him around a decade ago, he still visited Jindong every day to tend the vines, returning to Busselton each evening to care for his wife. He knows or cares little for the goings-on beyond these parameters but, when pressed, remembers some people who said they were thinking about wine-growing coming to visit Boallia in the 60s.

But that’s someone else’s business not his, he says. :ooking out at that dustbowl of a front paddock filled with geriatric vines which, with each ensuing year, bear more leaf than grape and more ants than either, I can’t help but agree.

Chocolate. Because someone had to.

“Give me chocolate,
I need chocolate every day.
Just give me chocolate,
it’s a tiny price to pay.
If you don’t have too much money, Cadbury’s will do
but here’s a secret I’ll share with you:
Swiss will have me warm & willing,
Belgian, I’ll be wild & thrilling.
Chocolate to turn me on.”
From The Chocolate Song, by WA songwriter Margie Hanly

"What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead." George Bernard Shaw, 1894

"What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate." Katharine Hepburn


It was a tough assignment but someone had to do it. I spill the beans on the world’s favourite confectionery.

Chocolate. We rely upon its luxuriant, sultry richness to say we’re sorry and I love you. We use it to soothe and seduce, in celebration and by way of solace. No wonder the small tree responsible for producing cocoa beans is named Theobroma cacao – “food-of-the-gods cacao”.

Just about all eating chocolate contains cocoa mass, sugar, additional cocoa butter and small amounts of emulsifier (usually lecithin) and flavouring (often vanilla). The making of milk chocolate also involves the addition of various milk-based products, while white chocolate contains no actual cocoa but a high proportion of cocoa butter.

The Aztecs were responsible for introducing cocoa to the western world, but the cocoa tree was growing wild in the Amazon River basin and parts of Venezuela well before the end of the first millenium BC.

Propagation spread to the tropical forests of Mexico and its Central American neighbours, which was where the cocoa bean first evolved as a foodstuff. Mixed with other ingredients – vanilla, herbs, flower petals, chillies and honey – cocoa was integral to a style of cooking still found in Mexico and other parts of Latin America today.

When the marauding Aztecs acquired large parts of Mexico in the late fourteenth century, they eagerly adopted and extended the uses of chocolate, famously introducing a bitter, rather greasy drink made from cocoa nibs to the Spanish when they came a-knocking in the early 16th century.

The Spanish took chocolate home with them and, over the next 100 years, the habit of drinking hot chocolate became widespread among royalty and the cognoscenti of Europe, who reveled in cocoa’s aura of exotic luxury.

Then, in 1828, Dutchman Conrad Van Houten developed a way of mechanically extracting most of the fat from the crushed cocoa beans. Not long after, Swiss Rudolf Lindt invented conching – a mixing-meets-grinding process which involves the gentle heating and working of the cocoa mixture for hours, sometimes days, to develop flavour and promote a smooth, creamy finish. (To see what a conch looks like, go see the small one on display at Chokeby Road’s city store).

There are three main varieties of cocoa bean available in the world today. The finest of these, criollo, is highly prized for its richness and superior flavour but is fairly tricky to grow and so accounts for only 5% of the world's cocoa crop. Forastero is a hardier, more disease-resistant beast and is responsible for 90% of the world's cocoa. Then there’s Trinitario, a cross between criollo and forastero, named after the island of Trinidad where it was first developed.

Not that any of this is going to do you much good down at the local supermarket, where you’re unlikely to find the origin of the beans on the wrapper, let alone the name of the actual variety.

Almost all the chocolate we buy these days has been blended from a variety of cocoa beans
grown in various parts of the world to achieve a flavour profile associated with a
particular brand.

“Ultimately, what everyone wants is consistency,” says Chris Rayworth, who works in research and development at Masterfoods Australia New Zealand, one of the big three in Australian chocolate production. “Unfortunately, cocoa from the same supplier and the same source will vary from vintage to
vintage, so we play with different cocoas to achieve the same chocolate blend.”

Add to this the fact that even the same variety of cocoa bean will taste different depending on where it’s grown and the best bet you have of buying good chocolate is to go for a reputable company and be prepared to pay a little more for the best.

The basic way of making chocolate hasn’t changed for 150 years. At its foundation lies roasted cocoa beans fermented in the sun to develop flavour and then dried before being shipped to chocolate factories for processing.

But chew on a raw cocoa bean, as I did in Indonesia late last year, and you’ll find it hard to believe this pale little kernel bears any relation to the stuff you buy in bars at the local supermarket.

This is because it takes careful roasting to bring out the full flavour of the cocoa beans. Liberated from their shells and roasted, the beans – now called nibs – are crushed down into a fatty, dark brown paste known as cocoa liquor, or mass.

This mass is made up of two basic components: the brown stuff we buy in packets as cocoa, and around 56% cocoa butter – a fairly tasteless, off-white fat which, conveniently, melts at exactly the same temperature as the inside of your lip, and is responsible for the luxuriant melt-in-the-mouth unctuousness of good chocolate.

Once the cocoa mass has been conched it is known as couverture, from the French for “cover” or “coating”. In Europe, couverture is the technical name given to the best-quality cooking chocolate, which must contain a minimum of 31% cocoa butter and is hence thinner and easier to handle when melted. But these days, in Australia and elsewhere, the word has evolved into a generic term meaning any good quality chocolate.

Peter Wilson is the man behind Kennedy & Wilson, and one of this country’s most acclaimed chocolate companies. Wilson has championed the cause of artisan chocolate-making in Australia, sourcing fine cocoa liquors from around the world to make his own couverture, and supplying filled chocolates from his factory in the Yarra Valley to Qantas First Class. He says that the term couverture doesn’t really mean anything. “I take it to mean any chocolate with a high cocoa butter content, but really it’s just a way of saying the stuff’s good.“

Tempering is the last process in the chocolate-making game. A fairly complex heating, cooling and mixing process, it ensures the couverture develops the satisfying “snap” and inviting gloss so imperative in the highly competitive – highly sensual – world of chocolate.

This very final stage of the long-winded and painstaking process we call chocolate-making is usually the only bit you’ll get to see if you visit a boutique chocolate factory in Western Australia.

When buying chocolate, look on the wrapper for the amount of cocoa solids. This won’t, of course, tell you if the cocoa used is any good, but the better chocolates tend to have more cocoa solids, and some contain an extra thing called “cocoa solids, non-fat” which just means extra cocoa mass minus the cocoa butter. Look, too, for whether there’s any added fat other than extra cocoa butter, and at where sugar rates in the pecking order of ingredients.

The ultimate cooking chocolate
Australian chocolate must contain at least 20% cocoa solids, but several manufacturers make a chocolate bar so full of cocoa there’s room for very little else. The two bitter, sultry beauties I found locally – Kennedy & Wilson’s 99% Couverture (available at The Grocer in Nedlands) and Lindt 99% Cocoa (only from Chokeby Road’s city and Subiaco stores) are not your average eating chocolate.

The 99%, however, is absolutely perfect for adding intense, rich chocolatey notes to food. It would, for instance, make the basis of a marvellous chocolate mousse – you’d just need to add the requisite amount of sugar.

Better still, it can be used to flavour savoury fare, such as the Spanish-Indian molés of Mexico, or the Sicilian dish caponata, which traditionally contains bitter chocolate.

Unsweetened chocolate works particularly well with game and other strongly-flavoured meats. Try using it as you might a good olive oil or fine butter – to emulsify with cooking juices near the end of cooking, thus enriching and adding texture to the finished dish.

The ultimate chocolate tasting
Our tasting panel worked its way through more than 30 bars of chocolate, ranging in cocoa solids content from a modest 26% in Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to the 70% found in the dark, sophisticated, single-region chocolates produced by the likes of Lindt and Valrhona and Australia’s two most renowned chocolatiers, Kennedy & Wilson and Haighs. In between were an intimidating range of alternatives for the panel to sample, including sugar-free chocolate, soya-milk chocolate and a range of interesting organic chocolates I found at Earth Market in Subiaco.

What we liked

Dark:
Lindt Madagascar
Cocoa origin: Um, Madagascar
Cocoa solids: 70%
Comments: This divided the panel but I liked it, so it’s in. “Rich and aromatic with licorice and honied notes”.
Available: Only from Chokeby Road’s city and Subiaco stores
Price: $5.65 for 100 grams ($56/kg)

Valrhona Chuao
Cocoa origin: Plantation Chuao, Aragua, Venezuela
Cocoa solids: 65%
Flavour characteristics: Mild and creamy with a velvety mouth-feel and some nice orange notes. “In a word, yum.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets
Price: $10.75 for 75g ($143/kg)

Valrhona Gran Couva
Cocoa origin: Trinidad
Cocoa solids: 64%
Comments: This, the most expensive chocolate tasted by the panel, was Valrhona’s first single-plantation chocolate and is still something of an icon among chocolate purists. “Mild but full-flavoured with a long finish and hints of sultana and honey.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets
Price: $11.55 for 75g ($154/kg)

Haigh’s Premium Dark Chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 51%
Comments: Haigh’s is the only company in Australia importing raw cocoa beans and doing the whole chocolate-making thing from scratch, so it’s worth seeking out their products. “Dark and fairly sweet with a rich chocolateyness that lingers.”
Available: By mail order through the Haigh’s website: www.haighschocolates.com.
Price: $5.80 for 100g ($58/kg)

Dove Dark Origins
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 45%
Comments: We thought this was the best of the mass-produced commercial dark chocolates. “Buttery, nice back-palate of bitterness and very smooth.”
Available: At your local supermarket
Price: $3.38 for 200g ($16.90/g)

Kaoka organic Fair Trade chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 70%
Comments: An intensely-flavoured semi-bitter organic French dark chocolate made with Fair Trade cocoa which, like Fair Trade coffee, is purchased by bypassing the brokers and going direct to the growers, thus giving them a better deal.
Available: At Earth Market, Subiaco
Price: $ 4.95 for $100g ($49/kg)

Milk:
Lindt Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate
Cocoa origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 30%
Comments: Rich and smooth with beautifully integrated flavours. “Delicious. Tastes like a fancy version of Cadburys Dairy Milk.”
Available: From supermarkets and all Chokeby Road stores.
Price: $4.30 for 100g ($43/kg)

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
Cocoa origin: Various

Cocoa solids: 26%
Comments: Australia’s top selling chocolate bar. “Mild, sweet and beautifully-integrated flavours with a rich, fudgy mouth-feel. Still the benchmark for milk chocolate. Amazing for the price”.
Available: Everywhere in the known universe.
Price: $2.79 for 250g ($11/kg)

White:
Valrhona Blanc Gastronomie
Cocoa butter origin: Various
Cocoa solids: 35%, all of them cocoa butter.
Comments. The only white chocolate we deemed fit to taste. “Fudgy and fantastic. Completely lacking in that awful dried milk flavour you find in so many commercial white chocolates.”
Available: Various gourmet outlets.
Price: $20.35 for 200g ($102/kg)

Simon Johnson is the national distributor for Valrhona products and carries Australia’s biggest range. Chokeby Road is the WA distributor for Lindt.

How to taste chocolate
Even really good couverture can be a disappointment if you chomp it up too quickly and don’t allow all that cocoa butter to melt and do its silky-mouthfeel thing. So, to get the most out of your chocolate, place a small piece on your tongue and leave it there, undisturbed, for a full five seconds until the cocoa butter comes up to body temperature – a challenge, I know, but you can do it. Then, using the flat of your tongue, manoeuvre the chocolate slowly against your top palate, enjoying how it melts and oozes into the crevices of your mouth. Cocoa, particularly the fancier stuff, has nuances of fruit, tobacco, honey and other flavours, so probe the chocolate with the tip of your tongue, moving it about to make sure all your tastebuds get into the act.

A longish history of Perth's dining out scene

From giblet soup and tipsy pudding to rollerskating waiters and mayo made with condensed milk, Perth’s dining-out scene has gone through a fascinating evolution.

In 1935, you could buy a round of brain and nut sandwiches at Soldiers Sandwich Supply on St Georges Terrace for threppence.

Or, if this didn’t quite take your fancy, you could nip around the corner to Hay Street where, in that same year, Reno’s cafe was offering fricaséed lamb chops and green peas for the grand old sum of one and six; tuppence extra if you wanted home-made chutney.

Given that Perth’s earliest European settlers were British, inevitably it was traditional pommy fare that found its way into our earliest public dining rooms.

Not that there was one hell of a lot of dining out happening back when Perth was declared a township in 1829. It was all most people could do to feed themselves, let alone anyone else.

But by the late 1800s, there was at least a little bit of dining out happening in the city, and three of Perth’s fancier hotels – The Palace, The Esplanade and The Adelphi (later to become The Parmelia Hilton) - had a reputation for their “fine cuisine and silver service”.

If you were a member of the Chamber of Commerce or someone high up in politics, you got invited to the occasional shindig. Otherwise, you ate at home.
So, what were people eating back then? Well, giblets were kind of big, as were oysters, boiled chook and all the usual olde-worlde offal delicacies – ox tongue, calves head, that sort of thing.

Perth’s Newest Australians were also very much into their meat. They ate it fricaséed, they ate it boiled, they ate it minced. Mostly, though, they ate it roasted, and always – and I do mean always – with potatoes.

Not that everyone was ecstatic about Perth’s hotel dining-out scene. In 1906, Royal Consul Leopoldo Zunini came to WA to establish an Italian Consulate and reported back to his countrymen that:

“The menu is almost always limited to roast beef, drowned in a black, evil-smelling sauce...the helpings...are usually spread with an indefinable, whitish, viscous substance which resembles remarkably the paste used by bootmakers to stick the soles of shoes; I presume it has the same flavour. All this is washed down with tea or coffee (which means chicory). Don’t even mention fruit.”

Even by 1935, just nine businesses were listed under the “cafes, restaurants and dining rooms” section of the Perth phone book, most of them English-style tea rooms serving sandwiches, cakes and tea in thick-rimmed cups.

Down on Barrack Street in the city, a couple of places run by Greek and Italian migrants offered fish and chips or steak and eggs, but that was about it.

But change was a-coming, and how. On 6 January 1939, entrepreneur Bernie Hardwick opened a little stall selling fresh seafood down on Mounts Bay Road. For a community starved – quite literally – of places to eat out, Bernie’s was a godsend. Soon, his little lantern and kero stove were a Perth landmark.

“Dad spent his entire working life there, on the exact site where The Mount Hospital now stands,” says Bernie’s son, Mal Hardwick.

When American servicemen came to town in the early 1940s, Bernie saw an opportunity. “Dad erected tents and sold steak, bread rolls and all the trimmings and people would cook their own, “ says Mal. “So Bernie’s was Perth’s very first cook-your-own-steak restaurant.”

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Australians continued their love affair with meat. In 1941, Perth’s King Edward Hotel was offering “roasts of turkey, goose, chicken, duck, beef sirloin, lamb, pork and suckling pig” on its Christmas menu. One wonders where they found room for the guests.

The first Soho coffee bar opened in London in 1952. Two years later, Melbourne got its first espresso cafe. Not long after, Perth followed suit and took its first tentative steps towards the cosmopolitan cafe culture we enjoy today.

These continental-inspired dens of iniquity, which stayed open until the wee small hours, and where folk occasionally put – gasp – booze in their coffee, were frowned upon by the community’s more straightlaced members.

Meanwhile, WA’s ethnic migrant community was busily swelling, mostly as a result of Italians, who settled in Perth after the Goldrush.

Many of these migrants were fishermen and used Fremantle as their base. By the mid-1950s, two Italian cafes, The Capri and The Roma, had opened in the port town, both offering fare never seen before in Perth; chicken and spaghetti, scallopini, osso bucco.

Mayor of Fremantle Peter Tagliaferri has fond memories of both restaurants.
“The Capri opened just before the Roma, which was the fancier of the two places,” he says. “The Capri was more for migrant get togethers.”

Peter, whose father used to co-own The Capri, says the restaurant was very much a part of the community.

“On Saturdays, when Fremantle closed at one o’clock, they’d all come in, the bootmaker, the tailor, and we’d sit around talking about the football, this and that. People joined your table even when you didnt know them. I loved the sense of community you got there.”

Nella and Frank Abrugiato ran the Roma from when it opened in 1954 until Frank’s death in 2000. Nella and her children continued on, but she found the going pretty tough without Frank. She closed the Roma’s doors in 2006.

“Now that it’s gone, what I miss most are the customers,” says Nella. “They used to come in and hug you and kiss you. They were such beautiful people. The women used to get all dressed up.”

In the 1960s, Perth residents discovered overseas travel and began to explore further afield, embracing new cultures and becoming interested in a wider range of cuisines.
“Quench your thirst with dripping fruits and shivering drinks served by broad-shouldered Fijians,” read a newspaper advertisement from the then BOAC.

Northbridge, too, was evolving, and had become an enclave of Italian and other ethnic eateries and coffee shops. To go to Northbridge – or “north of the line” as it used to be called – was considered very daring indeed by members of Perth’s fairly straightlaced community.

By 1971, I Dream of Jeannie was showing on Channel Nine and Ansett could fly you from Perth to Sydney return for $121. Culottes and baby doll smocks were all the rage and at Liquor Barons you could buy a half-gallon of sherry for the grand sum of $1.50.

Western Australia’s interest in all things culinary was growing, too. In his autobiography, The Voice of the Great South, Eoin Cameron, who hosts ABC radio’s morning programme, remembers getting the 1970 version of The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook as a wedding present.

“Every self-repspecting cook of the seventies mastered the pepper steak, not to mention chilli con carne, kofta curry and savoury meatloaf. And what would we have done without veal?...weiner schnitzel, veal parmesan, dutch veal croquettes, veal marengo, veal cordon bleu, veal and mushroom ragout....the choices were mind boggling.”

On 2 August 1970, The Sunday Times published its very first Night Owl column, written by Bill Thompson. At the time, there were just 30 restaurants in Perth. If you wanted glam, you went to Luis in the city, or to Perth’s one and only oceanside restaurant, the Seacrest in Cottesloe.

The State’s mining boom saw Chinese restaurateurs from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane move to WA. In the early 1960s, there had been just two Chinese restaurants. By the mid-70s, according to Perth’s Chung Wah Association, this number had grown to nearly 200.

Jack Lau opened the Swan Lake restaurant in Floreat in 1979. A few years later, he moved to Cottesloe and opened the Jade Court. He’s still there.

In those boom years, says Lau, the Jade Court was incredibly busy. “We were fully booked three or four weeks in advance. We’d turn over a table two even three times a night.”

Mind you, back then every restaurant in Perth was busy, says Lau. “You’d go to the Sunday buffet at a hotel in the city or to the Parmelia Hilton’s Garden Restaurant and everywhere was full.”

It was the days of boom or bust, of flashy entrepreneurs and expense account lunches which merged into dinner. At Luis in the city, Perth’s fat cats were ordering Caviar Royale and escargots. At the Hilite 33 revolving restaurant, you could dance to live music every night of the week.

When Aldo and Connie Dichiera opened Julio’s Restaurant in West Perth in 1985, people queued at the door for a seat.

“Back then, no-one seemed to care who paid,” remembers Dichiera. “They’d just toss a coin and stick it on their expense account.”

Perth was clearly enjoying itself. At Bar Bzar in Subiaco, food was served by waiters wearing rollerskates. And at the Bacci Restaurant in Mount Hawthorn, $12.50 bought you six courses of Italian fare with all the house wine you could drink.

Yet by 1982, Bill Thompson was predicting disaster. “Five years uncontrolled growth has reached its day of reckoning,” he trumpeted in an editorial of the time, “with many restaurants on the brink of financial ruin...restaurants in Perth continue to open at an alarming rate...the situation is becoming chaotic...”

Worse was to come. In 1986, the Labor government introduced Fringe Benefits Tax and Perth restaurateurs immediately felt the pinch.

“I estimate we lost around 25% of our revenue as a result of FBT,” says Terry Bright, Executive Director of Restaurant and Catering WA.

Not that it was all bad news. By early 1987, Fremantle was in the throes of Americas Cup fever and, as a result, the al fresco dining scene took off.

Mayor of Perth Peter Nattrass says it took his own city a little longer to embrace the concept of outdoor dining.

“Our health officers used to say we could never have al fresco dining in Perth because of all the flies.”
But the Americas Cup changed all that, says Nattrass.

“We had one red tape opposition after another, but people finally realised how stupid it was, all these international visitors wanting to enjoy our beautiful weather and nowhere to sit outside. Fremantle led the way and Perth was very quick to follow.”

Then, in late 1987, The New York Stock Mark crashed. Suddenly, the big money had gone and Perth’s high flying dining-out scene simply couldn’t sustain itself.Restaurateurs were forced to re-think their marketing strategy.

Enter cafe culture, which took off in the 1990s and is still with us today. Mind you, the noughties have seen a resurgence in the more traditional restaurant.
“I think people are ready to eat properly again,” says Aldo Dichiera, one of a handful of restaurateurs to have ridden the wave of dining-out fashion and survived.

“The cafe scene slowed us down a bit but we’ve made changes to accommodate the public’s desire for lighter, healthier fare, and we’re as busy as ever.”

Tanis and Geoff Gosling opened The Witch’s Cauldron in Subiaco in 1970. They, too, are still going strong and have seen a change in people’s eating habits.

“In the old days, people would order three courses,” says Tanis. “Now everyone’s eating less.”

Today there are around 3,000 restaurants and cafes in Perth, a third offering “modern Australian” fare, 20% serving Chinese and other Asian and just 9% which class themselves as Italian.

According to a recent Roy Morgan survey, fast food is a major player in the dining out stakes, with more people reporting a fast food experience than a meal out in a three month period.

All this goes hand in hand with a community that, increasingly, wants to dine casually. According to Harry Ferrante, President of the Restaurant Catering Industry Association of WA, Perth is following the European trend for more casual places which blur the line between restaurant and cafe.

“It’s all about superfluous rituals which are no longer needed,” he says.
Which, if you ask me, is just a teensy weensy bit sad.
Lobster Thermidore and crepes suzette, anyone?

Other stuff you may not know about Perth's dining-out (and drinking) history:

The six o clock swill
Contrary to popular belief, this State was never subject to the notorious “six o’clock swill”, which came about because hotels were required to close at 6pm. Here in the west, the closing time was always much later; around 9pm.

We did, however, have to contend with “the gallon licence” – a forerunner to the current liquor store licence held by such outlets as Liquorland and Woolies.

Basically, this licence forbade the sale of anything less than one gallon of liquor.
Because of this, it was apparently fairly common back in the early 60s to see a smartly-dressed couple on their way to dine out with a gallon keg of beer tucked under one arm.

Perth remembers
“The ‘40s was the era of the set price dinner. For about a shilling, you’d get soup, a main course, shepherds pie, fish, lamb, something like that, followed by jelly and custard. Sometimes there was a steamed pudding.” Perth resident, Ken Mellet.

Dad’s 1964 stockmarket windfall when I was 10 sparked my first visit to a “proper” restaurant: the Canton in Hay Street. I remember the exotic aromas, the gooey, cornflour-thickened sauces and the wonderfully strange and sticky sweet and sour pork." David Hummerston, restaurant reviewer for The West Australian newspaper between 1988 and 2005.

“In 1969, the Adelphi Steakhouse at the newly-opened Parmelia Hilton Hotel was considered so out there. We cooked our own steak and helped ourselves to the salad bar. I have fond memories of a baked potato beautifully wrapped in alfoil. And of course, we drank claret” Gail Williams, restaurant reviewer for the Sunday Times newspaper.

We first arrived in Perth in 1971 and the immigration people put us up at a hotel in the city. Our first breakfast was cold lamb chops, beetroot slices, fatty bacon and a fried egg with a greasy brown frill around it. The white bread had curled up and long since died. The lumpy gravy they’d poured on top had merged with the juice from the beetroot. My black coffee came with an orange slice in it. When I queried it, the waitress said ‘Well, you have lemon in tea, don’t you?”’ I very nearly went back to Europe then and there.” Ian Parmenter, Festival director, Tasting Australia.

“Back in the mid 70s when I ran the Matilda Bay restaurant, we wouldn’t dare go into a Saturday night service without six cartons of cold Ben Ean moselle in the fridge.” Graham Bolton, Restaurateur and Chair of the Hospitality Industry Training Council.

“In 1976, my sister’s latest beau took us both to Perth’s first revolving restaurant, King Arthur's Table at the Red Castle motel, built and run by his parents. I remember how the sword Excalibur magically rose and fell in the middle of the fountain outside, the white damask tablecloths, the fine fare. I ate chicken kiev nestled on a potato nest followed by crepes suzettes. I was giddy with pleasure at it all.” Geraldine Mellet, Radio and Television Broadcaster.

“In the heady days of the mid 80s, my family regularly enjoyed Sunday buffet lunches at the Parmelia Hilton’s Terrace Restaurant. I remember the furry gold wallpaper in the loos, learning how to shell prawns...and always getting a crème caramel.” Emma Green, Scoop mag's Editor.

I grew up in Cowaranup and the single biggest moment in my childhood restaurant-going life, quite seriously, was when Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in Bunbury. Mum and dad drove us up there specially. It was an absolutely massive thing for us.” Russell Blaikie, chef, Must Winebar.

Timeline
1899: The Terrace tearooms open in Kings Park. Nine years later, a second tearoom opens, on the site now occupied by Fraser’s restaurant.

1932: ABC Radio transmissions commence in Perth.

1934: Pavlova is invented by chef Herbert Sache at Perth’s Hotel Esplanade.

1935: The Boans Cafeteria opens

1934: Bernie’s opens on Mounts Bay Road

1947: The Capri opens in Fremantle. In 1957, it’s taken over by the Pizzale family, who still own it today.

1954: La Roma cafe opens in Fremantle and is run by the Abrugiato family until it closes in 2006.
1968: WA’s first drink-driving legislation is introduced and diners begin to look closer to home for places to eat out.
1971: The first Hungry Jacks outlet in Australia opens in the Perth suburb of Innaloo.
1977: Nunzio Gumina introduces pavement dining at Papa Luigi’s in South Terrace, thus heralding the beginning of Freo’s Capuccino Strip.
1979: Alain and Lizzie Fabregues open The Loose Box in Sawyers Valley. Nine years later, they move to their current premises.
1982: Perth’s first Macdonalds franchise opens at Cinema City.
1986: Fringe Benefits Tax is introduced.
Jan87: Fremantle hosts the Americas Cup Challenge.
Oct 87: New York stock market crashes.
1988: Random Breath Testing is implemented in WA and Perth diners have even more reason to stay home.
1995: The booze bus is introduced to WA.
1999: WA passes legislation which prohibits smoking in enclosed public places where food is served.

What was big when
1940s: Sweetbreads in aspic, jelly and ice cream, peach melba, roasts, offal, fruit pies.
50s: Angels on horseback, lobster newburg, roasts, plum pudding at anytime of year
60s: Seafood cocktail, crepes suzettes, gammon, chicken and crumbed pineapple, knickerbockerglorys, buffets, cook your own steak, crayfish mornay, candles in chianti bottles on the table, seafood generally.
70s: Dinner parties, Fillet mignon, tournedos, theme nights at restaurants, trout with almonds, chicken liver pate, pavlova, cassata, ceesecake, black forest gateau, 1000 island dressing, duck a lorange, steak diane chocolate mousse, beef wellington, garlic prawns, the womans weekly cookbook. burgundy tablecloths and fresh flowers on the table, fondue,
80s: Chinese restaurants, nouvelle cuisine, chicken a la king, nut sundae, crayfish thermidore, chicken kiev, chateaubriand, Mexican restaurants, croutons in soup, coquilles st jacques, valet parking.
90s: Cafe culture, bruschetta, ceviche, gazpacho, risotto, White Rocks veal, big plates, bigger glasses, white napery and tealights on tables.

Broome dining update

A recent visit to Broome found the town brimming with sunburned visitors and a growing sophistication in the dining-out department.

The cost and reliability of sourcing ingredients continues to be a problem for restaurateurs in this remote community.

Noosa it still ain’t, but the town’s chefs are beginning to wise up and learn how to make the most of what’s grown and produced locally.

Someone has just started flying in Pacific oysters from South Australia, so you’ll now find fresh oysters on the menu at many a Broome establishment.

One of my favourite new spots is Azuki (Shop 1, 15 Napier Terrace, Broome, ph 9193 7266), where chef Scott Thorpe’s intriguing fare melds Nippon finesse with hearty Western technique. If this sounds a little worrying, fear not. In Thorpe’s safe hands, what’s on offer actually works really, really well.

In the centre of town, Ra Ra's (26 Dampier Tce, Broome, ph 9192 1395) is a modest little daytime-only joint offering seriously good breakfasts with a Turkish bent and own-made everything, from breads to chutneys and mayo.

For classy fish and chips it’s hard to beat The Wharf (Port of Broome, ph 9192 5700) a friendly seafood cafe with views over Broome jetty. The staff are some of the friendliest in town and the wine list is surprisingly large and impressive. Take along a handline and factor in time for a spot of fishing off the jetty afterwards. Takeaways are also available.

Two of the town’s best diners sit side-by-side opposite the town’s famous Courthouse. At Noodlefish (cnr Hamersley and Frederick streets, Broome, ph 9192 1697), you eat in an open-air dining room overlooking the main road. The service is average to middling and you drink your wine out of water tumblers, but it’s worth it for owner-chef Stephan Mitchell’s mod-Asian fare, which is very good indeed.

Next door at The Aarli Bar (cnr Frederick and Hamersley streets, Broome, ph 9192 5529), ex-Stokehouse chef-owner Nick Wendland offers funky, well-crafted tapas and great breakfasts. Diners sit beneath the buttermilk blossoms of a spreading frangipani tree, screened from passing traffic by palms, crotons and other exotic greenery.

Cafe Carlotta is still the friendliest and most consistent place to go for quality Italian fare, in an atmospheric al fresco courtyard screened from the road by loads of lush tropical foliage. Wood-fired pizza and own-made pasta specials are particular highlights.

Broome’s newest dining room is Cafe at the Pearle (14 Millington Road, Cable Beach. 08 9194 0900), where chef Trent Scarr offers carefully-made, well-honed mod-oz fare (the tea-smoked oysters featured on the home page of this blog are Trent's work) and own-made pastries.

For wine hounds, the newly-opened Zeebar (4 Sanctuary Rd, Cable Beach, 08 9193 6511) is a big, friendly wine bar off the main drag at Cable Beach. Chef Tustra de Souza-Pinto’s wine-friendly menu includes various share plates and tapas. Fridays after work are noisy and fun, while sundays feature live music. Local musos to watch out for include Steve Pigram and the boys from Desert Child.

Must-eats in Broome
Coconut ice cream in a waffle cone at The Ice Creamery.
Mango and banana slushies at the Courthouse Market.
Funky bento box offerings which change daily at Azuki
Weekly pearl meat tastings at Pearl Luggers
The tea-smoked oysters at Cafe at the Pearle.
Battered whiting, chips and own-made mayo at The Wharf
Twice-cooked duck and spicy green paw paw salad at Noodlefish
Whole baked fish specials at The Aarli Bar
The Turkish breakfast at Ra Ra’s
Long slabs of gooey wood-fired pizza at Cafe Carlotta
Barramundi croquettas and a glass of bubbles at Zeebar