Foodies in Yallingup: A 48-Hour Eating Itinerary

The region feeds people well. It has for as long as I've been here.

When I started in 1982 it was a different place. A few wineries, fewer restaurants, and the farmers market was a paddock with some trestle tables. Forty years on, you can eat at the level of any food region in Australia inside a twenty-minute drive of my workshop on Blythe Rd. I'm not exaggerating. The chefs we've got down here cook with the same seriousness as the winemakers, and that wasn't always true.

Two days isn't enough to do it justice. But two days is what most people have, so here's how I'd spend them. This is the itinerary I give visitors who tell me they want to eat properly.

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Come down on Friday afternoon if you can. The drive from Perth is three hours and you don't want to be racing to get to dinner.

For Friday night, my recommendation is Lamonts in Dunsborough. It's on the bay, the wine list is excellent, and the food is honest: local fish, regional produce, nothing precious. The terrace at sunset, looking out over Geographe Bay, is a good way to land. Book ahead. Lamonts fills up on Friday and Saturday nights, especially in summer.

If Lamonts is full, the alternative is Yarri in Dunsborough. Small, modern, the kind of place where you sit at the chef's bench and watch the food being made. I like that. It's the same instinct I have about the workshop viewing window in the gallery. The process is part of the meal.

Don't try to do dinner and a winery tour on the same day. You'll be tired, the light will go, and you won't enjoy either. Land, eat, sleep.

The Margaret River Farmers Market on a Saturday morning is the most important meal of the weekend, and you don't actually eat there. You shop.

It runs from about 8am to 12pm at the Margaret River Education Campus on Bussell Hwy. About forty stalls: vegetables, fruit, bread, cheese, smallgoods, honey, coffee, eggs, fish, pastries. Everything is local and most of it is from within an hour of where you're standing.

This is genuinely the best place for local produce in the region. It's not a tourism stall, it's where the chefs and the locals shop. Get there by 9am. By 10:30 the best stuff is gone.

What to buy: bread from the bread stall, cheese from one of the dairy stalls (the Margaret River brie is the obvious one but the harder cheeses are better), olives, smoked fish if it's there, and at least one cup of coffee from the coffee van. Whatever vegetables are at the front of the season: autumn is mushrooms and pumpkin, spring is asparagus and broad beans, summer is stone fruit and tomatoes.

Margaret River Farmers Market on a Saturday morning. That exclamation mark is doing a lot.

If you've rented a house with a kitchen, that's your Saturday night dinner sorted right there. Pasta with what you bought, a bottle of local wine, no booking required. Best meal of the weekend, probably.

Saturday lunch is when you go to a winery. The two I'd choose between are Vasse Felix and Clairault Streicker.

Vasse Felix is the original cellar door of the region, the first winery to plant in the Margaret River area back in 1967. The restaurant is upstairs, looking out over the vines, and the menu is built around the wines in a way most winery restaurants only pretend to be. The chef cooks with what's in season and what comes out of the region's gardens and waters. It's not cheap but it's worth it for a proper lunch. Book early. You can book lunch at Vasse Felix online.

Clairault Streicker is the other choice. Less famous than Vasse Felix but the food is just as good and the room is calmer. They've got a long lunch menu that runs at a sensible pace: three or four courses, paired with wine, takes you two hours. The Streicker side of the operation makes some of the best Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin in the region. I usually drink the Chenin at lunch.

Choose Vasse Felix for the occasion, Clairault Streicker for the meal.

A note on driving: pick one, don't try to do both. Lunch at a winery is a slow lunch. That's the whole point. Cram in a second cellar door afterwards and you'll be too full to taste anything.

where I send people for cellar doors

After lunch, you need to move. Three courses and a bottle of wine will park you on the couch if you let it.

The gallery on Blythe Rd is a fifteen-minute drive from either Vasse Felix or Clairault Streicker. We're open till 5pm most Saturdays. The point of stopping by isn't to buy a piece of furniture (though people sometimes do); it's to walk around in a building that's made of the same materials as the landscape you've just driven through. Jarrah walls, southwest limestone, southwest light coming through the windows. Pamela curates the gallery; I'm usually in the workshop. You can see through the viewing window.

The gallery as a cultural stop between food experiences makes sense to me. You can't eat for six hours straight without something in between, and looking at handmade timber in a room made of handmade walls is a calmer kind of activity than another cellar door.

Then go to the beach. Smiths or Yallingup, ten minutes away. Wash the lunch off.

A directions note: Google Maps sometimes tries to send you to the gallery via Wildwood Rd. Don't go that way. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd.

Two options for Saturday night.

Option A: cook in. If you've shopped at the farmers market and you've got a kitchen, this is the right call. Bread, cheese, smoked fish, some vegetables grilled simply, a bottle of the wine you bought at lunch. Eat outside if the weather's good. This is what most locals do on Saturday night. It's the best meal of the weekend not because it's elaborate but because it's not.

Option B: eat out. Without market shopping or a kitchen, my pick is Aravina Estate for a winery dinner. They do a more relaxed menu in the evening and the room has the right energy for a second consecutive winery meal without feeling like a repeat of lunch. Alternative: Wills Domain on the Yallingup side. The Wills lookout dining room has the best view of any restaurant in the region.

For pub food (and there's a reason you might, after a serious lunch), the Yallingup Steiner does a good steak and chips and the atmosphere is local.

Sunday wakes up slower. The pattern I'd follow:

Coffee in Dunsborough first thing. There are three or four good coffee places on the main street and you can't really go wrong. Find one with the morning sun and sit outside.

the coffee notes from Busselton to Augusta

Then walk. The Cape Naturaliste lighthouse walk to Sugarloaf is the one I'd send you on after a big Saturday. It's gentle, the views are continuous, and you'll work up an appetite for brunch.

Photo: Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

For brunch, The Common in Dunsborough is the local choice. It's small, the coffee is good, the food is honest: eggs, toast, mushrooms, the kind of food you want after a walk. Don't expect anything precious. They've nailed the basics.

For something fancier, the Vasse Felix breakfast menu is excellent, but you'd be eating in the same room you ate lunch yesterday, which feels like overdoing it. Save Vasse Felix for one meal.

Sunday afternoon is the moment for Gabriel Chocolate in Yallingup. They make chocolate from bean. They buy cocoa beans from small growers and do the whole process on site. You can watch the roasting through the window if you time it right. The single-origin bars are extraordinary and the hot chocolate is the best in the region by a long way.

It's a small place, easy to miss on the Caves Rd side of Yallingup. Worth the stop. Buy a couple of bars to take home.

the Chocolate Company and what is nearby

After Gabriel, drive slowly. The road from Yallingup to Margaret River through Carbunup and the back of the wineries is one of the prettiest drives in the region. Don't rush. Stop at any cellar door that catches your eye for a final tasting. You've earned it.

For your final meal, I'd go simple. The Margaret River Brewhouse does an honest pub lunch in a setting that's relaxed enough for the end of a weekend. Local beer, local food, no fuss. You're not going home to remember a complicated dish. You're going home full and content.

Alternative: the Beerfarm in Metricup. Long drive but they do food trucks, a beer garden, and it's an easier vibe than a restaurant.

Don't book anything elaborate for Sunday late lunch. The point is to wind down, not wind up.

Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

1. Fri 7pm

   Lamonts, Dunsborough

   Land, eat, sleep. Local fish, terrace overlooking the bay.
2. Sat 8am

   Margaret River Farmers Market

   Shop for Saturday night dinner. Coffee from the van.
3. Sat 12:30pm

   Vasse Felix or Clairault Streicker

   Long winery lunch. Three courses, two hours, no rush.
4. Sat 3:30pm

   John Streater Fine Furniture, Blythe Rd

   Cultural stop between food. Watch through the workshop window.
5. Sat 7pm

   At home or Aravina Estate

   Cook the market shop, or a relaxed winery dinner.
6. Sun 8am

   Dunsborough coffee

   Slow start. Sit in the morning sun.
7. Sun 10am

   Cape Naturaliste walk

   Lighthouse to Sugarloaf. Builds appetite.
8. Sun 12pm

   The Common, Dunsborough

   Brunch. Eggs, mushrooms, more coffee.
9. Sun 2pm

   Gabriel Chocolate, Yallingup

   Watch the chocolate being made. Buy bars to take home.
10. Sun 4pm

    Margaret River Brewhouse

    Final lunch. Pub food, local beer, easy.

A few things I'd skip if I were doing this for the first time:

• Multi-winery tours where you do four or five cellar doors in a day. Pick one or two and stay for proper lunch. The tour-bus approach gives you a blur, not a meal.
• The fancy ice cream places. They're fine. But you're here for wine and produce, not ice cream.
• Restaurants that don't take bookings. In peak season you'll wait an hour for a table you didn't need to wait for if you'd booked. Plan ahead.

What makes the region work as a food destination isn't any single restaurant. It's the density. Inside twenty minutes of my workshop there are probably forty good places to eat, and most of them are sourcing from the same handful of farms, the same fish markets, the same dairy. You can't have a bad meal here without trying. You can absolutely have a great one.

Two days is enough for a taste. A week is enough for a proper meal. A lifetime still isn't enough. I've been eating my way through this region since I got here, and there are restaurants I still haven't tried.

the cellar doors with the best food

The gallery is the cultural stop in the middle of all this. Furniture isn't food, but the same instinct goes into both. Local materials, slow process, things made by hand. Come past on Saturday afternoon between lunch and dinner. Most days till 5pm.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

End the weekend on the beach. That's where I'd end mine.