Palm Beach scores a hat for its new grocer-cafe-restaurant-bar-kiosk The Corner, a partnership between chef Sam Kane and The Boathouse Group serving excellent produce and offering top-drawer deli goods and groceries.
Contemporary$$
Palm Beach is a place of wedding bush, spotted gum, inclinators and gossip. A land of wild geranium, clarion-blue water and epic wealth. Four decades ago, Peter and Beverley Doyle were awarded three hats in the first edition of the Good Food Guide for Reflections, while Neil Perry was making a name for himself at Barrenjoey House down the road. But for all the money spread across Palm Beach’s trophy homes, restaurants with ambition and sensibility these days are thin on the ground.
Kudos, then, to chef Sam Kane, who opened The Corner in September. You can buy a takeaway sandwich of shoulder ham and Bruny Island cheese, or pick up a David Blackmore steak and bottle of Benjamin Leroux Pommard to fashion a home dinner. I have popped in for a martini on the verandah when it’s sodden with the scent of oncoming rain, enjoyed a milky rice pudding with granola and stonefruit at breakfast, and settled in for the short and always changing a la carte menu at lunch and dinner.
When Kane says he uses the very best produce for his grocer-cafe-restaurant-bar-kiosk, it’s not a throwaway marketing line. Crunchy, vibrant radishes come from the Mussett Holdings regenerative farm in the Southern Highlands, and Kane has the confidence to serve them simply with butter and house-baked sourdough made with nutty, stone-ground emmer wheat. Conserved yellowfin tuna from Ulladulla is teamed with a sharp tomato, pickled onion and caper salad where all the components are balanced but distinct, and juicy Moreton Bay tiger prawns are wrapped in vine leaves and charcoal grilled.
The Corner is a partnership between Kane and The Boathouse Group, which also operates Barrenjoey House and several other coastal venues of varying (but rarely notable) quality. It’s in the bright white weatherboard mega-cottage that once housed The Boathouse homewares store, and eating inside the bistro space can feel like dining at an island resort, albeit one that plays Neil Young, Big Star and The Beta Band. There are linen tablecloths, a fiddle leaf fig and wicker-blade fans. The “grocer” section is coloured with organic fruit and vegetables for anyone inclined to drop $5 on a peach or $1.60 on a wax-free lemon.
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Kane was once the head chef at plush Newport restaurant Bert’s, and he has the chops to cook seafood and meat to become the best version of itself. I’ve encountered grilled and tender Port Lincoln calamari with new potatoes and green onion salsa; a fleshy, burnished pork chop sticky with peach glaze; and bass grouper on roast tomatoes briny with agretti, a bitter samphire-like green. Dessert could be a coddling apple pie, cherry and almond tart, or fruit dusted Mexican-style with Tajin chilli-lime seasoning.
The floor team is young, and there may be a few service missteps, but everyone is well-meaning, wine is poured at the table, and The Corner isn’t trying to be the new Reflections in any case. At lunch the other week, the golf club next door was heaving with members and guests ordering Thai beef salad and whatnot, while Kane had a fair number of tables to spare. Fingers crossed this changes. Indeed, the prices aren’t cheap, but surely Palm Beach can afford to spring for what great produce and assured cooking is worth.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Smart-casual resort bistro with top-drawer deli goods and groceries
Go-to dishes: Tiger prawns ($32); tuna conserva and tomato salad ($28); Speckle Park skirt steak ($69); cherry and almond tart ($15)
Drinks: Two-page list mixing well-known labels and independent producers, with several bottles in triple-digit territory, plus a few cocktails, tap beer and properly brewed tea
Cost: About $170 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
Callan Boys is Good Food’s national eating out and restaurant editor.Connect via X or email.
