On Good Food

Long-time friend from high-school and wife, who are currently residing in Melbourne, visited Perth earlier this week and wanted to catch up. Now being lovers of good food they also requested that I, the Perth-ian, recommend a good restaurant.

Horror.

Now, if they were travelling from any other city in Australia or from overseas, then the job would have been easier because I can either take them somewhere which I regard as good or at least let them try cuisines that they do not often get at home. But what can a Perth-ian offer the Melbourne-ians, whose city is known as the city of good food? Any restaurants we have, they have more, and probably in better quality too. It's like asking me to recommend a good Perth shopping place to a Melbourne fashionista!

However.

I did discover a very peculiar thing through conversations with them - and that is, for all the Greek, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, bakeries and 1,001 sweets shops that Melbourne has to offer - they cannot remember seeing a German restaurant. The good ol' German restaurant. Well, not only does Perth have a few, we have a couple of really recommendable ones too.

We took them to my favourite German restaurant, the Alpine. To those who have not heard of this restaurant, it is a well-hidden gem within the suburb of Carlisle, a house-turned-restaurant that is easily miss-able from the outside to those who are unaware (quote a friend who lives down the road: Is that a restaurant??). It carries through a similar theme inside the restaurant - you walk through the main door to a cosy common hallway that is filled with a quaint decorations and handful of tables. If you look carefully you can see a picture of John Howard on the wall (taken with the owner of the restaurant), nestled amongst the many Restaurants of the Year Awards they have won in previous years. There are separate rooms to accommodate more diners to the side and down a flight of staircase to the back.

In relation to the food there are a couple of things you need to be aware of:

1. You will have to be prepared to wait. For quite a while. The restaurant is solely run by a husband and wife team - husband as chef and wife as waitress with no additional help. The chef also takes a lot of pride in his cooking and is persistent that you will have to wait in order to get good food (and he is right). A tip: Have a cool, thirst-quenching malty German beer while you wait.

2. Although there are a few of the dishes that are superbly delectable, not all the dishes are equally yummy. A good indication to start with is - always order the German dish i.e. if you're torn between a choice of the pepper steak and the Schweinehaxe - choose the latter.

3. Be prepared to have lots of meat. Lots and lots of good meat.

My personal favourites are: the Schweinehaxe (a 1kg baked pork hock with crunchy skin and extremely soft flesh), the Gebratene Ente (half duck stuffed with apples and herbs also baked to perfection) and Kasespatzle and fried camembert for starters.

Unfortunately I was too busy enjoying myself the other night I did not take any pictures - here is a picture of the Scheweinehaxe for your hungry eyes, courtesy of the Alpine's website: