Set in a distinctly West Australian setting, this Dunsborough bar and restaurant champions the South West in delicious, assured ways.
Australian$$
Swamp yates, slender peppy trees, soaring marris and other native flora crowd the view from Yarri, the restaurant’s black steel windows and outdoor lights forming a picture frame that turns each eyeful of verdant pompom-like foliage, jangly fingers of fibrous bark and bursts of blue sky into an unfinished, never-ending Arthur Streeton still life.
I don’t know if it’s because the trees have grown or because I have but this scene – a scene that I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy many times prior to this latest Christmas viewing – freezes me. I quietly admire the panorama while the eternally dissatisfied paintbrush of Mother Nature continually make edits. I resist the urge to grab my phone. It’s a quiet moment but its message resonates loudly and clearly: this is an operation intrinsically connected to the South West.
Shift focus back to the handsome, richly textured dining room and you’ll clock other clues that will, Memento-style, help you figure out where you are.
Yallingup furnituremaker Nathan Day built the tabletops out of hardy blackbutt eucalyptus. (Or, as it’s known in Nyoongar, yarri.) Most of the wines offered by the glass and half-bottle are made locally by Snake & Herring; partners in this hybrid Dunsborough bar, restaurant and cellar door that opened in 2018. The kitchen, meanwhile, has also picked its produce and producers with an eye on local talent.
This hometown bias begins immediately with the snacks that kick things off. Albany oysters topped with cool cucumber granita are nestled into a hilly landscape of knobbly quandong seeds alongside a branch of spindly gum leaves. Those leaves reappear in illustrated form on a square of wax paper sitting beneath thick slices of sourdough.
Fluffy of crumb and crackly of crust, the house-baked bread is terrific and requires zero embellishment. But don’t let that stop you from dragging your bread through the saucer of bitey Wulura Farms olive oil doctored with fat flake salt served with it. (Also: salting the oil you dip your bread in? Game-changer.)
Of course there’s marron on the menu, although Yarri’s current iteration – split and roasted in the kitchen’s wood-burning Zesti oven and dressed with a loose harissa sauce – rates as one of the region’s finer preparations of its favourite freshwater crustacean. (That same oven, meanwhile, lends deep char to juicy lamb rump and hefty bone-in sirloin served with a sweet black garlic butter.)
This marron also doubles as a fine example of the assured, cosmopolitan and delicious cooking approach of Yarri chef-patron Aaron Carr. It’s a style that he hasn’t just been fine-tuning for nearly a decade as a part-owner of his own place. It also owes much to the astonishing 21 years he spent at Vasse Felix. But despite being more than three decades deep in this cooking game, Carr is still, impressively, committed to growing. As is Eve Franssen, the gardener that tends Yarri’s kitchen garden planted at the Snake & Herring cellar door in Wilyabrup.
While the house salad of roasted pumpkin seeds, turmeric-stained cucumbers and lush ruffles of butterhead lettuce – even in late December! – best embodies Franssen’s handiwork, the garden’s influence is everywhere. Matchsticks of pickled kohlrabi and needles of seablite crunch up cured emu high on dark chocolate richness. Pinheads of society garlic flower add jolts of purple to dry-aged kingfish afloat in a lurid green aguachile. Fermented garden honey is mixed with aromatic kunzea oil to finish a dense white chocolate cheesecake scattered with crushed macadamia nuts.
Although no one would ever call COVID “good”, the establishment of the Yarri garden during the lockdown feels like a thread of silver lining, as was the move to set pricing with diners booking in for either a three-course prix fixe ($109) with snacks and add-ons or a six-course tasting menu ($165). Walk-in guest? Just want to smash some cocktails and put yourself in the hands of Govert Naber’s front-of-house crew that get hospitality? Don’t want to commit to anything? Consider the smaller a la carte bar and courtyard menu.
I’ll admit, it’s been years since my last proper Yarri hit-out so I’m thrilled I got back over the break and got to be a passenger aboard a ship that felt like it was sailing smoother than ever, the cooking tighter, the service more unforced. Even better, Yarri wasn’t the only good eating Dunsborough had to offer with local stalwarts Occy’s (fish and chips! Gluggable beers!) and the bakery (all the pies!) also on point.
Like you, the break gave me some extra kilos that need relocating. But it also gave me thinking time. Why is it that the food world – which, let’s be real, also includes food media – tends to focus on places when they open, when they close or when they get ordained as institutions? Like any good book, movie or album, it’s the bit in the middle where things get going and the story unfolds.
True, there will always be an appetite for the new, but humans (and restaurants) cannot live on breathless TikTok hype alone. Hospitality operations are always better once they’ve addressed opening teething issues. So it stands to reason that the longer they’ve been around for, the better their understanding of both themselves and their guests. Enter exhibit A, Yarri.
If it’s been a while since you’ve been, Yarri needs to be on your southwest wish list. And if you reckon there are other places quietly evolving away from the public eye, I’m all ears and would gratefully receive any intel. Everyone grows best, I think, when we work together.
The low-down
Atmosphere: an assured, versatile dining and wining operation showcasing southwest produce and producers
Go-to dishes: sourdough bread, char-grilled marron with harissa, sunrise lime and saltbush
Drinks: the full Snake & Herring range supported by contemporary cocktails, beers and wine from other predominantly Australian wines
Cost: about $218 for two people, excluding drinks and extra dishes
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
