Lakeside Restaurant (Karri Valley Resort), Pemberton, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Holidays Down South are some of the most cherished memories of my childhood, and few places are imbued with more nostalgia than Karri Valley. Along with Albany, Karri Valley Resort was our favourite destination for family holidays Down South, and I vividly remember canoeing on the lake with my Dad while wearing my favourite stripy t-shirt, walking a section of the Bibbulman for the first time on the opposite side of the lake, and games nights of Celebrity Heads, Monopoly and Scrabble with family and friends whenever we stayed in one of the larger chalets. It was where I celebrated my 13th birthday, and there are albums we listened to while driving through the karri forests that to this day bring back fond memories of a happy childhood.

Typika, Claremont, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Perhaps its the memory of hellish morning drives to UWA in my university days, but Stirling Hwy has long been my least favourite road in Western Australia. That this narrow stretch of road is called a highway is a cruel joke, and with its unwinnable combination of buses pulling over in the left lane and cars turning right without turning lanes in the right, the constant stop-start lurch means there is no street in Perth with a higher chance of rear ending a BMW than Stirling Hwy. I don't have much patience for infuriating road conditions, and as such I seldom make a trip out to the Claremont area since the very worst of the traffic bottleneck occurs there.

Of course I'll make an exception for good food, and this was what found us in Claremont on a rare work free Saturday for Alissa. I'd heard about Typika during the last year, and the mention of duck steamed lotus buns was enough to convince me we had to try this place out. Typika serve lunch every day except Sundays, so since I have work during the week and Alissa usually works Saturdays this was going to be our only chance for a while to try their lunch menu.

Having arrived at 11:30am in case there was a crowd, we were able to be seated immediately upon arrival at one of the tables in the brighter front section of the cafe - my choice since it would be beneficial for photography.

That said, the place had sufficient tables available for us to have sat in the moodier space to the rear of the venue.

As with Bread in Common, interesting lighting concepts abound in this space, the most striking being the conical flask light bulbs hanging over the high chair share tables.

Since we were early for the midday start of the lunch menu, we started with a round of coffee and some snacks. Being artisan roasters, I expected quality and my usual order of topped up long macchiato/strong latte did not let me down as it was a well made coffee at a perfect temperature. Personally, I think I like the bean at Bread in Common better but as Alissa astutely pointed out, its more a matter of a personal preference than once being inherently better than the other. If you like a softer, mellower flavour this will probably be more to your liking.

Being summertime, Alissa went with the 'naked' iced coffee. This was a nice and refreshing iced coffee, its 'nakedness' denoting it was not one of those super sweet monstrosities that are more sugar than caffeine.

Alissa loves a good sweet potato chip, so we had to order a serve of their mixed Chips. The serve may have been small for $6, but it was absolute quality - easily the best fries I've had since the last time I cooked Heston's triple cooked chips. These tasted like they were at least twice cooked, and the difficult task of making sweet potato chips as crispy as regular potato was passed with flying colours. Excellent aioli too.

Our other snack order was a serve of their Onion Rings. I've had better, more flavoursome versions of this dish, but these were excellent nonetheless - far better than the familiar mass produced version found at Hungry Jack's and less oily that the greasy version often sold by fish and chips joints.

12 o'clock came around and it was time for our very pork-centric lunch. The first share plate to arrive was the Pulled Pork Quesadillas.  These maintained the high standards set by our snack orders, the pulled pork nicely seasoned and the Quesadilla pockets both crispy and yet still malleable.

The element that really raised it as a cut above was the grilled corn, capsicum and avocado salsa. This was top notch, its refreshing juiciness complementing and enhancing the flavours of the pork and cheese.

The current Typika menu did not have the duck lotus buns. Instead, it went full Momofuku and did their version of the famous David Chang Pork Belly Buns. Here the pork was made in a char siu style as a point of difference, served with (apparently) pickled cucumber and (apparently) chilli jam. If the cucumber was pickled I didn't quite taste it, though I was very happy to find the cucumber thinly sliced. The sauce on top did not taste like chilli jam to me - I could have sworn it was hoisin. Other that these seeming discrepancies between the menu and what was served, I was very satisfied with the results.

The pork belly had a lovely fattiness that bordered on bacony, and the salty-sweet flavour of the sauce combined with the freshness of the cucumber resulted in a dish that was very, very tasty. The buns may not have been as soft as those at Ippudo, but the flavours were bolder. Different, but neither was necessarily better than the other. Alissa was a little disappointed as she was expecting the version I make at home, which is basically banh mi in a steamed bun and thus includes coriander, carrot and mint but she admitted later it was probably a case of having expectations it would be something that it wasn't. Oh well - her being disappointed meant I got to eat two of the three buns so I was definitely happy!

The Verdict: Excellent
When I went up to pay, the woman at the counter looked at what we had ordered and said, 'you guys had a really good lunch'. And she was right - the food we had that day was of a consistent standard in share plate cafe food that was well thought out and executed. Considering our meal and drinks came to under $60, I was satisfied with the price too. I don't know how often I'd be heading out to Typika considering its location and the lunch menu being unavailable on Sundays, but it impressed me enough that I'd brave a drive down Stirling Hwy for a return visit. Recommended.

Bread in Common, Fremantle, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Our initial plan for Australia Day was to have lunch at Typika in Claremont, but with friends coming over for dinner we couldn't afford the drive out to the western suburbs. Plus the fact they were closing at 1pm and advertising an all-day breakfast made us a bit worried that the exciting lunch menu would not be available. Instead, we decided to pay a visit to another coffee and casual dining establishment that is fairly new to the Perth dining scene - Bread in Common, located on Pakenham St in Fremantle.

As much as I'm never in Fremantle these days, my childhood and high school years were spent as a Freo kid. I've seen this city change for better and worse - I remember where Fossey's used to be, or when Watsonia's original store on High St was still open, alongside many shops and failed businesses that now live on only in the collective memories of long time residents. As a formerly safe haven for free parking, my family had often parked on Pakenham St, and I remember the converted warehouse this is Bread in Common when it was still a marine engineering company, as a lot of Fremantle's West End used to be.

Seeing it now, with its herb garden, benches and bicycle rack outside, its hard to imagine the brick exterior had been hidden under a layer of horrible render - if you look at it on Google maps, its almost unrecognisable. 

This charming façade immediately proclaims itself as very hip and very now, and the interior again showed that a great deal of time and effort has gone into design and aesthetics. 

Its very pretty in that West End, reclaimed warehouse post-industrial way - a similar aesthetic to the very hipster-trendy Gordon St Garage. But of course hipster flair will only get you so far - sure, newness and wanting to be seen will get that initial crowd through the door, but its the food that will keep the business going once the new kid in town trendiness wears off. 

While we perused their menu, we ordered our coffee - Alissa a cappuccino and a long macchiato/strong latte for me.

Having seen a Synesso espresso machine on our way in, we knew it was going to be good coffee and we were not disappointed - this was the best coffee either of us have had since Iggy's - not overly hot or bitter, the milk not overly steamed and fluffy. This was faultless coffee.

Being a place based around bread, we decided to go with a serve of their mixed bread plate for two, along with hand churned butter and the very interesting sounding Whipped Pork-Pistachio, Fennel spread. As with the coffee, this was fantastic - easily the best bread we've eaten since Caprice and Otto e Mezzo in Hong Kong. When you consider that I'm comparing their bread to two 3 Star Michelin restaurants and that we've done quite a few fine dining establishments in between, that's high praise indeed. 

The butter was very tasty (though not as good as the butter at Caprice), but the real star was the Pork-Pistachio spread. This was just incredible, combining one of our favourite meats and two of its good friends into a smooth, delicious spread. I'm more a noodle person than a bread fiend, but this spread on some quality bread everyday for breakfast could make me a convert.

We additionally ordered some polish sausage, pickled chilli and some tomato chutney to go with the bread. These were very good, but nothing really surprising - especially when you compare it to the charcuterie plate at Vasse Felix.

We had originally ordered separate mains, however Alissa's main was taking longer to make so they brought out mine to share - not how we intended, but not a deal breaker either. My order was Squid, Watermelon, Green Olive, Pork Crackle, Oregano, and was as delicious as that combination sounds. The pork crackling was like unctuous croutons on top, and the squid had a lovely char flavour to them. This green olive tapenade gave it a salty-bitter kick which was cut nicely by the freshness of the watermelon. This was a great combination of flavours wonderfully executed.

Swordfish, Coriander, Wild Rice, Pawpaw, Green Mango, Chilli was however not quite as successful. The fish was cooked wonderfully with a nice char to the sides and a rare interior, and the salad and rice were very tasty. The problem was that it was extremely salty, with the darkish sauce (hoisin?) overriding the otherwise balanced dish. Which was a shame given how expertly cooked the fish itself was.

We hadn't planned on a dessert, however our greed got the better of us and we decided that we'd share a plate. While the Peanut Mousse, Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream, Raspberry, Oreo was supposedly the most popular of the desserts, we decided the fresher sounding
Peaches, Goats Curd, Lemon Verbena, Cashew Crumble was more our cup of tea. And it sure was - this was an excellent dessert. The peaches were presented two ways (fresh and poached) and along with the candied cashews provided the sweetness for the dish. The strongest elements of the dish were the sorbet which gave the dish a cold sweet tartness and the goats curd which seemed to be a panna cotta since it had the surprising consistency of soft tofu.

The Verdict: Excellent
There was the misstep of the salty Swordfish dish (both as a dish and coming out later), however in every other way Bread in Common succeeded at proving they weren't all style; they actually had a lot of substance to back it up. Bread and coffee were outstanding, and the squid and dessert were examples of well executed dishes based around considered flavour combinations. While we felt it was a bit early for a glass of wine, we were impressed to see many of our favourite wineries represented - Marchand and Burch, Single File, Stormflower and Forest Hill to name a few. We'd definitely love to come back here for some good conversation, good wine and good cheese with friends in the future. Definitely a new favourite in the Freo area.