A subtle shift in direction makes an inner-city favourite even more compelling. Pass the mezcal.
15.5/20
Mexican$$
Consider, for a moment, the evolution of the wine bar in Australia. Previously
available in just four flavours – French, Italian and Spanish, plus a broadly
“European” catch-all – wine bars have significantly broadened their horizons over the past decade.
In Melbourne, there’s Manze: a Mauritian wine bar that taps into the diverse island heritage of co-owner Nagesh Seethiah. The enduring popularity of Brisbane’s Snack Man, meanwhile, is a reminder that lo-fi wines can do things for Asian food that tea can only dream of. (See also the Taiwanese-inspired cooking at Muni in McLaren Vale, South Australia: one of my standout meals of 2024.)
Following the recent discovery of a maverick inner-city wine bar serving bold, brilliant Mexican cookery, Perth has entered the genre’s DEI chat. Sort of.
I say sort-of because the food at Casa, the Mount Hawthorn wine bar in question,
doesn’t just hang its hat on cocina Mexicana. Italy, for one, forms a healthy chunk of its playbook: think thick shoelaces of tonnarelli pasta and tiny mopheads of crab meat bound in a lurid jalapeno butter. Toast graffitied with fat squiggles of chicken liver parfait is typical of the bistro cooking that might appear while the menu occasionally dabbles in retro throwbacks (hello prawn cocktail lettuce cups).
I also say sort-of because, according to Casa chef Paul Bentley, his cooking isn’t
what he’d describe as Mexican food. Or at least Mexican food made by someone
with an intrinsic understanding of the cuisine and culture.
“I didn’t grow up with an abuela [grandmother] cooking birria [a classic Mexican goat stew] on the weekends,” says Bentley. What our man did do, though, was spend a decade working in Mexico where, among other things, he opened Magno Brasserie – a distillation of everything he learned under legendary Perth chef Alain Fabregues at The Loose Box and Daniel Boulud of New York’s French powerhouse Daniel – operated ramen bars, plus ran a string of bakeries. (So that’s why Casa’s pillowy focaccia and the dough at its pizzeria spin-off are both so good! The peso drops.)
The other thing Bentley did in Mexico was eat plenty of Mexican food, from the fancy to the street. So much so that when COVID lockdowns stranded our man in Perth, he brought his understanding of spice and acidity to the food he was cooking at Si Paradiso – the tepache (fermented pineapple juice) he’d slip onto pizzas, say – as well as Scarborough’s goodtime beachside cantina, El Grotto.
So when Bentley and fellow Casa partners Cale Mason and Sydney-based chef
Enrico Tomelleri of Darlinghurst’s magnetic Paski Sopra opened Casa in 2021, it felt inevitable that Mexican influences would seep into that menu too. That octopus would be cooked al pastor taco style and laid across toast. (No longer on the menu, alas.) That a herbal Mayan-influenced pumpkin seed dip would partner said focaccia, and that those pepitas would also be turned into a salsa for grilled cabbage, charry from the grill.
Both, thankfully, are still on the menu, as are more recent creations a la skewers of juicy lamb rump brightened by a sauce bright with barbacoa spice.
But for the new-new stuff, it’s all about the $79 chef’s menu. Once an outlet for
Bentley’s classically minded French cooking, the set-course option is now a four-
stage meal comprised largely of off-menu items sporting a strong Mexican flavour.
Sometimes the influence is subtle: the zip of pickled cactus in the flank steak tartare, maybe, or casting crunchy tostadas as ideal vehicles for highlighting the silken pleasures of pristine cured bonito.
Other times though, the accent comes through loud and clear. That would be the
brooding mole poblano – a rich, slow-cooked fantasy of dark chocolate, dried fruit and a supermarket aisle’s worth of spice – pooled underfoot rosy, dry-aged Wagin duck breast. The bird’s legs, meanwhile, form the filling for dainty flautas: rolled-up, fried tacos that are even more fun to eat than they sound. (The tortillas for the flautas and tostada, incidentally, are made locally by the nixtamalized corn whisperers at La Tortilla.)
For anyone that’s been stung by tasting menus that feel lazy, underdone or
offer questionable bang-for-buck, Casa’s offering may help restore your faith in the format.
Not that committing to a (somewhat restaurant-y) menu is mandatory for enjoying yourself here. Like any self-respecting wine bar, Casa has a welcoming, third-place charm that makes it feel like an extension of home, even if those rendered walls, mid-century accents and finely tuned speakers make it feel like the living room of an especially well-designed holiday home in Milan.
You can push the boat out, even on a weeknight, or drop in a bowl of chips with green Goddess sauce or a scoop of pistachio gelato: switched-on and engaged staff will make you feel welcome, regardless.
Of course, Casa isn’t the first place to have thought of serving tacos alongside vino. While not explicitly wine bars, establishments such as El Publico and La Cholita helped expose Perth eaters to Mexican food-and-drink matches beyond Coronas and bottles of tequila with worms in them. The joys of eating jarred salsa and packet corn chips on the couch are near universal, not least with bottles of juicy pinot noir, Yellowglen and the remote in easy reach. Thanks to the ubiquitousness of Old El Paso et al, you and I can enjoy such Tex-Mex pleasures without having to leave the house.
But for Mexican-ish cooking of a higher calibre – and plenty more besides –
we’ll have to go to Casa.
The low-down
Vibe: New-era Mexican cooking for the discerning (wine) drinker
Go-to dish: Charred bonito tostada, focaccia with pumpkin seed dip
Drinks: One of Australia’s finest explorations of organic winemaking supplemented with thoughtfully chosen beers, spirits and cocktails
Cost: About $150 for two, excluding drinks
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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.
