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City West: a landmark for anyone who remembers Video Ezy, Hypercolor T-shirts and global panic over the Y2K bug, school excursions to Scitech or motion sickness at the Omni Dome.

In 2021, the complex welcomed Asian-inspired cafe Forklore and its owners – brothers Han Li Khor and Han Ji Khor, plus chef Brian Kong.

During that first year, team Khor-Kong simultaneously ran Forklore as well as their original cafe, Bayswater’s popular TBSP. Following the closure of TBSP in 2022, the trio were able to focus their energies exclusively on Forklore. As an outsider looking in at this airy, bustling 60-seater and the crowds that appear like clockwork around lunchtime each day, this seems like a very good thing. Even if management didn’t have to contend with dine-in guests, keeping up with the demand for house-baked goods feels like a full-time job.

I feel like I could write a whole piece on Forklore’s bakery division and how self-taught baker Han Li Khor – a former Malaysian-born molecular biotechnologist – celebrates Asian bread culture, either by serving excellent versions of contemporary, often Japanese-inspired favourites, or by finding common ground between Asian flavours and European baking. Exhibit A: the elegant house croissant ($6.50) made using a butter spiked with nori powder (savoury!) and topped with the Japanese rice seasoning known as furikake.

A plank of squishy, turmeric-stained focaccia ($5) studded with baby tomatoes taps into Japan’s love of curry. Bitter matcha and fragrant yuzu co-star in an unusually deft bit of pound cake ($6). The golden kare pan ($8.50; deep-fried bread filled with pork mince) is as naughty and calorific and fortifying a mass of empty carbs and fat as any Japanophile could hope for. And I mean that in the most positive way.

Not that the bakery’s sole muse is the land of the rising sun and convenience-store deliciousness. Pastry specials in the vein of filled pineapple buns ($15; a puffy dough ball crowned with a biscuity base and filled with changing fillings including sweet red bean paste and whipped mascarpone) take inspiration from the dim sum parlours of Hong Kong where Han Li’s wife Venus hails from.

Another of Forklore’s key husband-and-wife partnerships is that of chef Kong and his Japanese wife, Kaori. It was Kaori who introduced Kong – a Mauritian-Chinese cook that swapped a career in computers for the kitchen life – to Japanese foods and flavours beyond teriyaki and katsu. Discovering yoshoku cookery (Japanese-western dishes that reflected the country’s efforts to rejoin the global community after centuries of self-isolation) was especially revelatory for Kong who now serves many of these classics on the Forklore menu.

Such as the mentaiko udon ($25), a glorious mess of udon noodles slicked with a creamy sauce flavoured with cod roe and luxed up with a slow-cooked egg. If Italians ramp up pasta with bottarga (cured fish roe), surely it makes sense that Japanese cooks would use a similar ingredient to flavour their wheat noodles? There’s also the deeply gratifying hambagu omurice ($24) which is as much about the sweet and salty rice stir-fried with ketchup and soy sauce and draped with a silky, just-set omelette – omurice is short for omelette rice – as it is the juicy hamburger patty (think of it more as an Italian-style meatball bulked out with bread, milk and other fillers) slicked with a glossy demi-glace.

If a diner was in the mood for a more conventional burger, however, the Forklore kitchen could do them a double cheeseburger ($19) that’s plenty juicy (while tasty, I suspect hardcore burger types might not feel that the advertised smashed patties were smashed enough, though). Glamour shots of Forklore’s famous chicken katsu sando starring a chook cutlet cushioned by pillows of fluffy Japanese shokupan bread ($24) are a frequent sighting on social media.

When his workload allows, Kong will put limited edition ramen experiments on the menu and spruik them on Instagram. These specials almost always sell out on the day, usually before lunch. While I’m yet to take one of these ramens for a spin, the tonkotsu congee ($24; a permanent menu item featuring a savoury rice porridge that uses Japan’s notoriously rich pork broth as its base and is served with all the usual ramen trimmings) is a cool nod to the country’s beloved noodles.

As un-Australian as it might be for me to write this, I don’t generally enjoy eating out at cafes. Or at least cafes with cookie-cutter menus where diners pay a premium for sauces out of a jar. Why would you go out to pay good money for something that you could cook at home? Generally speaking, the food at Forklore – and other new-wave cafes that have shaken up Perth’s brunch scene over the past decade – isn’t food I could cook at home. In Forklore’s case, Kong’s cooking also employs homely, familiar flavours that speak to my Asian heritage as well as that of others. (Which no doubt helps explains how busy Forklore gets.)

Over a handful of visits, I’ve observed a curious mix here. Families pushing prams. Young students rocking squeaky white sneakers and Burberry scarves. Groups of workmates that have commandeered the outside tables for morning coffee. I don’t know whether they remember the Omni or Scitech excursion, but as we all take part in this contemporary expression of both Asian and Australian food cultures, breaking deep-fried bread and sipping batch-brew coffee, memories are being forged, and I smile.