Best Restaurants in Dunsborough

I'm not a food critic. But I've been eating in Dunsborough for forty years, and I know the difference between a place that's been there long enough to be worth something and a place that opened last summer to catch the tourist dollar.

Photo: Ronan, Unsplash License

Dunsborough is the practical food town for anyone staying in Yallingup. Yallingup itself has a handful of restaurants and they're good, but they fill up fast. Dunsborough has the volume, the variety, and a fifteen-minute drive from my workshop on Blythe Rd. If you're down for a week, you'll end up eating here at least three times. The wider things to do in Dunsborough sets the food list in context.

Here are the places I send people. In rough order of how I'd use them.

A few things worth saying up front.

First: I'm a furniture maker, not a chef. I notice what's on the plate the way I notice the joinery on a chair. Is it well-made? Is it doing what it claims? Is the room set up so the food can land properly? That's my filter.

Second: Dunsborough turns over restaurants fast. Places open, places close, the names on the strip change every couple of years. The list below is the spine — places that have been here long enough to trust, plus a couple of newer ones that have earned their spot. Anything I haven't included is either too new for me to judge or too forgettable to bother.

Third: book everywhere in peak season. Christmas through January, Easter, school holidays, and any long weekend. Walking up to the door without a booking gets you a long wait or a no.

Yarri is the proper occasion restaurant in Dunsborough. Modern, ambitious cooking, a small dining room, and an open kitchen so you can watch the food being plated. Aaron Carr's the chef-owner, and anyone who's eaten at Vasse Felix over the years will recognise the touch.

The menu changes constantly. They run a tasting option and a la carte, both well thought through. The wine list leans regional with some interesting older bottles if you want them. The room is small enough that the service is properly attentive without being theatrical.

If you've got one big dinner in you for the trip and you don't want to do a cellar door, Yarri is where I'd send you. Book at least a week ahead in peak, longer in summer.

Lamonts is the long lunch on the bay. The restaurant is set in the old Bishops House grounds at the eastern end of Dunsborough, looking out across lawns to Geographe Bay. The room is timber-floored, white-walled, and the deck is one of the better places to sit on a warm afternoon.

The food is honest regional cooking with a long lunch sensibility. Local fish, regional produce, a wine list that knows the area properly (the Lamont family also makes wine up in the Swan Valley, so they're not amateurs at this). The terrace fills up on Friday and Saturday nights in summer; lunch service is a calmer time to come.

What I'd order: whatever the fish of the day is, with a glass of the Margaret River semillon. Save room for the cheese course. They take this part of the meal seriously.

Photo: undefined · via Wikimedia Commons

Eagle Bay Brewing is ten minutes north of Dunsborough proper, on Eagle Bay Rd. I've written about it in the brewery post, but it earns a place in the Dunsborough food list as well, because most people staying here treat it as a Dunsborough restaurant in practice.

The kitchen does wood-fired pizzas, share plates, a kids' menu that's not an afterthought, and a Sunday roast in cooler months that's worth booking for. The deck looks out across vines and rolling country. In the warm months it's one of the better lunches in the region full stop.

Family-friendly, dog-friendly, the kind of place where a long lunch becomes a long afternoon without anyone minding. Book ahead.

the four breweries of the region for the wider beer-and-food picture.

The Common is the everyday spot. Small café-restaurant on the main street, good coffee, honest food. Eggs done properly, mushrooms on toast, a couple of sharing plates if you want a casual lunch. Dinner is a tighter menu but consistently well executed.

It's where I'd come for breakfast or a casual lunch when I'm in town for an errand. The room is small. They don't take bookings for two but they will for four or more. Get there early on weekends.

The pub. It's been here a long time, it's been renovated more than once, and the current version is the best it's been. The bistro does a good steak, a passable parmigiana, a fish and chips that won't let you down. The beer garden is large and properly shaded, which matters in a Geographe summer.

Where the Tavern earns its keep is as the reliable mid-week dinner with a group, or the easy Sunday lunch when you don't want to make a project of it. The atmosphere is local, the kitchen has improved markedly over the last few years, and the bill at the end is sensible. I send families here for the first night of their stay, before they've worked out the cellar door bookings.

The Tavern is the local meal that solves the problem. Not every dinner needs to be a project.

The Dunsborough Bakery on the main street is the morning stop. Sourdough is the headline. The pies and the pastries are also good. The croissants are properly laminated and worth the queue.

What I'd buy: a sourdough loaf to take back to the rental, a couple of pies for lunch, an iced coffee from the machine in the corner. They sell out of the good stuff by mid-morning on weekends. Get there before 9am or accept whatever's left.

Wise Wine isn't in Dunsborough proper but it's a short drive out (Eagle Bay direction) and the kitchen is well-regarded. Lunch on the terrace looking back over Geographe Bay is one of the better long-lunch options in the wider region.

Bay Organics is the lunch café for the health-conscious end of the spectrum. Good salads, sensible sandwiches, decent coffee. The room is small.

Settlers Tavern, if you want a slightly different pub option, is technically in Margaret River town but it's the alternative to the Dunsborough Tavern if you're already that way south.

Pourhouse does cocktails and bar food on the main street. More of an evening drinks spot than a destination dinner, but a good last stop on the strip.

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How I'd rank them by use case, since "best" is the wrong word.

• Occasion dinner: Yarri.
• Long lunch with a view: Lamonts Bishops House.
• Family lunch, easy: Eagle Bay Brewing.
• Mid-week local dinner: Dunsborough Tavern.
• Casual breakfast or lunch: The Common.
• Takeaway food for the rental: the bakery.
• End-of-night drinks: Pourhouse.

That's enough variety for a week of meals without repeating yourself. Pair it with one or two cellar door lunches and one brewery lunch and you've eaten properly.

A few things, since this is supposed to be honest.

• Anywhere advertising on every billboard between Busselton and Margaret River. Tourist trap. Money on signs, not on the kitchen.
• The fancy fish-and-chips places that charge thirty dollars for fish. The Tavern does it for half that and does it nearly as well.
• Restaurants that don't take bookings in peak season. You'll waste an hour. Walk past, book at the next one.
• Anywhere that's been open less than six months. Give them a winter to find their feet. Plenty of restaurants down here open in summer and close in autumn. Wait and see.

After dinner in Dunsborough, the drive back to Yallingup takes fifteen minutes. The Caves Rd route is slightly longer but the bush road in the dark is one of the small pleasures of being down here. The Bussell Hwy is faster and just as easy.

If you're staying in Yallingup and coming up to Dunsborough for dinner, the workshop on Blythe Rd is ten minutes from the main street. Free entry, gallery hours till five most days. Stop in before dinner if you've got the afternoon spare. Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. Google sometimes routes via Wildwood. Don't take it.

If I had to give one rule for eating in Dunsborough: don't try to do every meal at a restaurant. The best week down here mixes restaurant dinners with farmers market shopping and a few simple kitchen-cooked meals at the rental. The town's not so small that you'll run out of options, but it's not so big that you need to eat out three times a day.

Two restaurant dinners, one long winery or brewery lunch, one casual brunch, one kitchen-cooked meal with market produce. That's a week. The rest is breakfast and beach.

the wider 48-hour eating itinerary for how to thread these meals through a Yallingup weekend.

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the cellar door restaurants worth the booking for the wider lunch picture.

The town earns its place as the food base for anyone staying in Yallingup. You don't need to like every restaurant on the strip. You only need to know which three to book.