Thoughtfully sourced ingredients treated with a gentle, confident touch beat at the heart of this thrilling wine country lunch.
15.5/20
Australian$$
Justin Hughes is, at heart, a boy from the country.
He grew up on a farm in the Avon Valley where parents Tony and Gayle ran sheep. Orphaned lambs became family pets. As a teenager, Justin and his mates swapped eskies filled with meat from happy animals raised entirely on the properties where they were born.
Of course, even the happiest of country kids starts daydreaming about city adventures. For Justin, those dreams entailed enrolling at uni, dropping out of uni and starting a cooking apprenticeship under dad who ran catering at the WACA. Justin clearly enjoyed the change. So much so that he moved to the biggest city of them all to sharpen his skills at Sydney fine diners including Becasse and Rockpool while Neil Perry’s flagship was transitioning to Eleven Bridge. Health issues, alas, forced Justin to not just come home, but to take a break from high-performing kitchens.
Naturally, your minds should have already fast-forwarded to the part where Justin recovers and starts (re)cooking his food and rediscovering his groove, a la John Favreau’s 2014 comedy-drama Chef. While Justin’s change isn’t quite as drastic as fine dining runaway Carl Casper buying a food truck, his current workplace sits a few notches below Eleven Bridge and its gueridon service and three-hat sizzle. But as we all know, good eating is no longer limited to places with double-dressed tables.
So onto Oscar’s in the Valley: an airy dining room rich in circa-2000s Country Style charm. It’s a place where guests can coo at vines, olive trees and the original copper still that kick-started the legend of Limeburners. Prior to becoming the Swan Valley tasting room for Limeburners and its gin offshoot Ginversity, this address housed popular wedding venue Carilley Estate. It was around this time last year that Oscar’s signed on to the lease at this spacious Herne Hill sharehouse.
Should circumstances require, Oscar’s can accommodate the multigenerational group chasing lunch – some ace grass-fed beef perhaps, or line-caught snapper from Exmouth – before that next winery, brewery or distillery visit. But to get the full measure of a place poised to be Perth’s next big destination restaurant, a dine-and-dash won’t suffice. Instead, opt into one of the tasting menus, clear the rest of the afternoon, study the ripper drinks lists rich in local treasures. Then let this masterclass in provenance unfold.
While the make-up of lunch is dictated by party size, the number of courses chosen and what’s in the kitchen’s larder and veggie crisper, every table gets the tangy spelt and wholemeal sourdough: thick, decidedly unfluffy and dense like mudcake. It’s ace with the accompanying house ricotta yet has the chops to also perform solo.
Juniper-spiked mascarpone (also house-made) and crushed hazelnuts offer soft and crunchy counterpoints to roasted broccoli stem and scraps of fried Tuscan kale: a streetwise ode to autumnal flavours. Squeaky runner beans are grilled hard and gently sharpened by the haunting brightness of preserved lemon.
This is farmhouse cooking not (just) by dint of location, but because of the menu’s tangible appreciation for farming, farmers and fidelity to ingredients. Chefs are fond of “letting the product speak for itself” and leaving what’s in their shopping baskets well enough alone. While some dishes at Oscar’s demonstrate such hands-off thinking – check out that rosy pickled veg made using vinegars from local growers Baba & Didas! – good cooking isn’t (just) about doing the least to an ingredient: it’s about doing the right thing to it.
Sometimes that means smoking wings, cheeks and other fishy offcuts, then dousing everything in a heady sauce of smoked fish bones: a nod to the Basque signature, pil pil. Justin calls this dish “smoked WA whitefish”. I call it one of the finest things I’ve eaten this year.
But sometimes the right way to treat something is to let it be. Berkshire pigs plus salt and patience equals fantastic prosciutto. A tiny cool room has been set aside for dry-ageing and hanging purposes: not in a showy, 4126-day ribeye sort of way, but to give meat the time – typically a couple of weeks – to begin developing flavours and naturally tenderise. In this case, such meats include richly flavoured Gwamby Grazing lamb, Walpole venison and other whole animals butchered in-house.
The twin pleasures of the venison duo – loin plus a roulade of peppery shoulder meat – suggests the relationship between Oscar’s and its meat wrangler Bully Butcher is a win for all. My hunch was confirmed by the lamb tasting plate and its many ovine glories, from the crispness of skin-on lamb belly to the funk-free richness of the fat crowning slices of tender lamb leg.
Forming genuine connections to people and places doesn’t just get you good meat: it helps you maximise the resources at hand. Fallen gum trees from the property fire the grill. Fat from dry-aged animals is rendered to help produce all-time potatoes fondant. Late-summer tomatoes brought in by locals, once fermented, become the perfect finishing touch for Spanish mackerel cured in a salt mix modelled on Ginversity’s native gin.
Does it read like I’m frothing on Oscar’s? Good, because I am. While Oscar’s is firing after its first year in Herne Hill – previously, it was based in Guildford before building issues forced it to relocate – what’s really exciting is that this feels like an operation on the ascent. Easy-going service led by restaurant manager Daniel Adam and Justin’s parents feels perfect for the setting; second-generation vigneron Tom Daniel of nearby Chouette Wine in Millendon is helping rehabilitate the property’s vines; plus Justin just moved his young family into the farm next to Oscar’s, which he’ll also be slowly resurrecting.
“There’s so much room for us to grow,” says Justin as he excitedly talks about the existing orchard, arable land and potential of his new six-hectare home.
Part of his excitement, I think, comes down to the prospect of creating a place that proudly reflects its Swan Valley address. The other part? Well, at the end of the day, Justin Hughes is a boy from the country: a boy and chef, I might add, that diners should be tracking very, very closely.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a Swan Valley farmhouse restaurant posed to be WA’s next big destination diner.
Go-to dishes: smoked whitefish.
Drinks: world-class whiskies – occasionally at justifiably world-class prices – backed by thoughtfully chosen WA wines with a heavy focus on Swan Valley producers.
Cost: about $160 for two people.
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.
