Open for just three lunches a week, this intimate 12-seat restaurant in Chidlow is an invitation for guests to taste Australia anew.
Australian$$$
Let’s play a game. They say a picture paints a thousand words, but today, I’d like you to think of an image that communicates just three: this is Australia. What do you see?
Is it an apparition of the MCG on the last Saturday of September that fills your mind’s eye? Maybe a packed Cottesloe beach during summer? Maybe even a beat-up VHS copy of The Castle?
For Emily and Nik Flack, the place that best embodies the spirit of Australia is Lake Leschenaultia, a postcard-ready nature reserve in the Perth Hills. It is a place of towering marri trees, campers and bike trails. Of blue-tongues, wood ducks and an eponymous freshwater lake that, in the right light, shimmers like a sequined dress.
It’s a view that was stirring enough to convince the couple to not just relocate from Queensland to WA with sons Hunter and Iluka, but to also leave enough space in their bags to bring along Flackyard: the Mackay tasting menu restaurant that they opened in 2019. Or at least the parts of it that fit into the car, anyway.
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Parts such as polished hubcaps of ironbark reborn as serving platters; cutlery holders fashioned out of lacquered tree branches; plus hit dishes such as juicy sticks of sugarcane tipped with bottlebrush gel and incy wincy green ants. But despite these throwbacks to Flackyard’s Yuwi Country era, reopening as an intimate 12-seater in Chidlow last year has largely been about the Flacks finding new ways to celebrate and honour the Indigenous flavours and culture of their new Nyoongar home.
They’ve worked with Perth Hills artist Olivia Kalin to build the upcycled tables that anchor their modest, clean-shaven dining room enriched with books and art. Vast noise-cancelling glass windows offer views of the lake, reserve and crowds, only minus the din.
Nik, meanwhile, has sourced prized Nyoongar ingredients such as emu eggs and the native radish youlk, then hit them with kitchen know-how gleaned from stints at Wildflower and Vue de Monde in Melbourne.
Those yolks, for example, are salt-cured and slowly rendered into a dense, fudgy mess before being arranged on tiny squares of charred brioche to create – ta-da! – new-school eggs on toast.
Crucially, relocating has also meant being able to open Flackseed, a spin-off kiosk window serving beef and kangaroo sausage rolls, fragrant strawberry gum slushies, chips seasoned with Barengi Gadjin pink lake salt and other holiday favourites that have been gently reworked using indigenous ingredients.
But as good as crunchy chippies, juicy sausage rolls and a la carte ordering might be, committing to a tasting menu in the restaurant is the best way to understand and appreciate the Flacks’ ambitious mission. Whether you go the six, eight or ten-course option, each menu starts with a trio of snacks. In our case, a single creamy raw scallop from Shark Bay cloaked by sunrise lime granita was the final member of our welcome party alongside the aforementioned sugar cane and emu egg toast.
From there, lunch unfolds as a series of artfully composed dishes that use contemporary kitchen thinking to celebrate some of the planet’s oldest ingredients. A crumb made from native grasses supplied by Dark Emu author and Bunurong, Palawa and Yuin man Bruce Pascoe crunch up spears of pickled white asparagus. Queensland coral trout is served with a distinctly ocker seafood bisque spiked with pepperberry and bitter emu bush and other indigenous plants.
Occasionally, these flavours are used as accents for introduced ingredients – the pickled quandongs accompanying a “risotto” of biodynamic pearl barley, say – but by and large, Nik’s cooking dazzles and astounds by thoughtfully combining the, to quote the Uluru Statement from the Heart, “two worlds” that First Nations Australians exist in.
No dish exemplifies this approach better than an extraordinary finger lime and Daintree vanilla ice cream fizzing with sherbet-like powdered boab from Winawul Country north of Broome. When was the last time vanilla ice cream shook your world?
Knowing how to cook precious ingredients is one thing. Being able to get a hold of them is another.
Nik readily admits that the relationships that Emily has made with traditional custodians are the reason he has access to these rare treasures.
Diners, meanwhile, also have Emily to thank for the gracious hospitality and imaginative non-alcoholic cocktails and drinks that underpin the restaurant’s beverage program. (Both Flackyard and Flackseed are sober venues.)
Naturally, all this comes at a price. The minimum spend per diner is $170 for six courses, while guests on Saturdays and Sundays are subject to a 10 per cent weekend surcharge.
On paper, this kind of money is far from loose change, but when you consider the price of some of these ingredients (a kilo of those green ants is $770) and dinner at big-name overseas fine-diners (a friend recently ate at former World’s 50 Best number one Geranium in Copenhagen and paid $650 for food alone) the buy-in feels fair for what you get.
And gee it feels like the Flacks give a lot of themselves here. Many places pitch themselves as a special occasion, bucket-list sort of place, yet Flackyard is one of the few that delivers.
Lunch isn’t just an investment in terms of money, but also time. Our eight-course menu ($220) ran close to four hours but thanks to the view and wide-bodied beige chairs (more Officeworks than Eames but unquestionably comfortable to sit in) it never felt like a chore.
Just as lunch kicked off with a set of small bites, three petit fours bring things to a close. The best of these is a smoky lemon myrtle marshmallow that is, thoughtfully, served on a gum leaf. Not only does this save diners from sticky fingers, it’s one of many small details that helps create a sense of place.
This is Nyoongar Country, it says. This is Flackyard. This is Australia.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a new, distinctly Australian destination diner to put on your dining wish list.
Go-to dishes: finger lime ice cream with powdered boab, emu eggs on toast.
Drinks: imaginative cocktails showcasing the liquid potential of our native bounty supplemented by other non-alcoholic beverages.
Cost: $340 for two people eating the six-course menu.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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.
