A pub classic prepared with smarts is just one way that this quiet achiever has been serving Perth for more than a decade.
Cafe$
The counter meal dream: footy, friends, frosty middies of beer and a steak sandwich deserving of its own Feast Day. The reality, sadly, usually involves multiple TAB screens, bored staff on phones, and schooners at pint prices.
The sanga, meanwhile, is almost always more miss than hit: a handheld trifle of bread, beef and wrecked napkins that makes me regret not playing it safe and ordering the parmy.
Of course, “almost always” isn’t always, as proven by a recent steak sandwich discovery that restored my faith in the genre.
The bread – squares of seeded loaf given a light charring – was, in Goldilocks parlance, just right. Not too thick, yet buff enough to support its precious cargo of jangly rocket spears, herby mayo, jaunty pickled onions and rump steak that’s been grilled medium-rare, sliced thick and carefully layered: a key countermeasure against the phenomenon of carpet-drag steak that occurs when biting into a (whole) steak sanga, yanking out its headliner, then being forced to rapidly inhale a plinth of cow, Hungry Hippo-style.
On wingman duties: ace, gently wrinkly skin-on chips plus a frisky, mid-spice ketchup: both house-made, both of a quality not typically served in pubs.
Which makes sense.
The sandwich in question comes not from a tavern or alehouse, but from Mary Street Bakery, Highgate’s long-standing cafe-bakery that was there for Beaufort Street’s heyday and looks likely to be there for those to come. (While Mary Street isn’t a pub, it is licensed so you can enjoy a beer with said sanga, although some of the cafe’s otherwise obliging, well-meaning staff don’t seem to be across this small but crucial detail.)
Does it feel unfair that a cafe is doing a pub grub staple better than most pubs? Perhaps. But considering how well-established Mary Street is, one gets the feeling that such crossover is inevitable.
In addition to its five outposts, Mary Street roasts its own coffee, has its bread in restaurants, supplies cafes and grocers with pastries, plus it collaborates with everyone from breweries to barbecue shops.
With so much Mary Street everywhere, it’s easy to forget that, once upon a time, it was just a neighbourhood cafe, standing in front of a city, asking it to love it and its pillowy doughnuts and sourdough bread.
While Mary Street didn’t invent the bakery-cafe model, its arrival in 2013 brought some fresh, distinctly un-cafe ideas to the table: a result, I feel, of being founded by four distinctly un-cafe owners that came primarily from the world of restaurants. (Hi, John Little, Michael Forde, Alex Cuccovia and Paul Aron.)
Today, Aron is Mary Street’s sole owner, yet many of these ideas are still in place. Dine-in guests are seated by a host and order via table service. The room’s uncluttered, vaguely Brutalist aesthetic – concrete aplenty, weathered Eastern European school chairs, timber off-cuts immortalised as a feature wall – feels as timeless as it did when Beaufort Street got its first look at the new identity of the old Soto Espresso site.
Most notably, Mary Street’s menu still adheres to the blueprint that was established in its infancy: yet another case of getting it right from the start. And not just for team Mary Street either.
I can’t think of many west coast places that were serving the American diner classic of fried chicken and waffles before Mary Street opened. Sure, Perth had fried chicken places. Perth also had pancake spots. But Mary Street was one of the first to condense what was then a two drive-through-window brekky into a single hangover-fighting order and, in good time, a P-Town cafe staple.
Mary Street’s filled and ring-shaped brioche doughnuts are America’s other major contribution to the story, although its bakers comb the entire planet for inspiration when developing new weekly flavours: how good was that recent choc-topped Dubai Chocolate special, heavy with pistachio cream crunched up with blitzed kataifi pastry?
But as it was when Mary Street opened, Asia remains a recurring theme on the brunch menu overseen by head chef Damien Brown, formerly of West Perth’s Table 78. So the fluffy crab omelette gets lifted by a taut Thai-style nam jim chilli dressing and limey herb salad, while finely crumbed Japanese eggplant fritters – perhaps more karaage than the bulky crunch of the advertised katsu – speak to the evolution of vegetarian cafe dining. (Brekky standards a la porridge and boiled eggs and soldiers, however, are standing by and waiting for your call should you crave the reassuring comfort of the familiar. See also sandwiches, sausage rolls, pies and other premade takeaway options.)
In our constant pursuit of the new and the shiny, it’s easy for eaters – and food writers – to take somewhere like Mary Street for granted. True, Mary Street has never been afraid to try something new – its Mary’s nighttime pop-up in 2015 remains, for mine, one of Perth’s most underrated restaurants – but such experiments have always been informed with a finely honed sense of what people want.
This successful zigging and zagging hasn’t just formed the basis of Mary Street’s success and steady growth: it’s also helped shaped WA’s cafe and baking scenes both indirectly and directly via Mary Street’s many alum.
Isn’t it amazing what you can grow when you get a hold of the right starter culture?
The low-down
Atmosphere: all rise for the local neighbourhood bakery and cafe that could (and did).
Go-to dishes: steak sandwich, all the doughnuts and pastries.
Drinks: great coffee, soft drinks plus a limited alcohol selection.
Cost: about $60 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.
