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Ripe persimmon? Burnt mandarin? Jetstar orange?

While I’m not sure which term best describes the otherworldly colour of the late-
afternoon sky I spy through the curtains, I’m sure that this early October lightshow is something I want to capture in high megapixels on my digital camera.

I dash outside and snap away, then notice tiny particles floating in the air like lazy snowflakes.

When I clock that the grey stuff is ash, I feel my eyebrows arch in shock. On cue, the acrid stench of smoke lights up my olfactory nerves, summoning Ghosts of Summer past.

Fearing the worst, I scan the day’s WAToday live blog and social media for reports of a major bushfire. I’m relieved to find none. Perhaps the soot and smoke were by-products of a controlled burn or a small blaze that local firefighters quickly got on top of. Whatever the case, I chalk up the experience as a timely reminder of the awesome power of fire.

A few hours later while dining at Fremantle restaurant Cassia, I get another insight into mankind’s relationship with fire, although this time around the lesson feels a little more optimistic. Opened in July, this 80-seat restaurant leans hard into the culture surrounding “Australian barbecue” (the phrase makes multiple appearances on Cassia’s website and press releases).

Its layout has been designed so that the open kitchen and its custom-built grill are the first things guests see when they enter. Cooks regularly turn to their one-and-a-half-metre-long hearth fuelled by charcoal and hardwood to help ingredients taste their best. Ingredients such as a skin-on bit of fish, carefully grilled over fire and served with veg and a glossy butter sauce ($42).

But because the chef running the show is Emily Jones – a cook who counts Perth
fine diners Wildflower and Rockpool Bar & Grill as well as Oslo’s two-Michelin-
starred Maaemo as former workplaces – she thinks about fish-of-the-day differently, starting with the fish itself: a fillet of wild-caught bonito.

Perth menus aren’t exactly awash with bonito – I overhear a diner on the table next to me dismiss it as “baitfish” – which is a shame. When handled carefully and briefly aged, the fish’s dense flesh develops a strong oceanic savour that equals terrific eating. The butter sauce, meanwhile, has been loosened with a vinegar infused with fish bones that have been smoked over the grill, while the veggies are steamed sprigs of rock samphire: an intensely salty coastal plant that ties everything on the plate together.

Considering the size of the kitchen in relation to the dining room, the menu feels big: a symptom, perhaps, of Jones striking a balance between things that guests want to order – the ubiquitous crudo and beef tartare (both $28); some sort of burrata situation ($26) – and things she wants to cook. Dishes such as duck liver parfait and brioche ($24) and salmon caviar with smoked crème fraiche ($20) call to mind Jones’s stint at urban distillery Republic of Fremantle, while other dishes are classics given a makeover.

In French food circles, sauce gribiche – think of it as mayo enriched with chopped eggs and capers – is a time-honoured accompaniment to veg. Here, it finds synergies with spears of Carnarvon asparagus ($22) blistered with grill marks. (Its menu descriptor of “fancy tartare sauce”, incidentally, is how Jones described the sauce to staff.)

The woodfire grilled chicken ($40) comes with a menu note warning diners that it’s served “slightly pink”, a result of brining and slow-cooking the bird before a final blast on the grill to blister its skin. Each plate of chook features half a chook cleaved into four good-sized pieces. Add on some crunchy baby potatoes ($16) embellished with that great vegan flavour bomb nutritional yeast and you’re looking at the makings of one very boujee chicken and chips.

Not everything sticks the landing, however. Lacklustre pickled mussels ($22) taste neither oceanic or vinegary enough and feel like an each-way bet. The wagyu pastrami ($28) also comes across as “generic”. These thinly shaved slices of smoked brisket aren’t terrible, but in a town where many equate pastrami with hot, thicky sliced beef that turns bread into the stuff of lunchbox legends, Cassia’s deli-style rendition feels wanting.

Perhaps it’s just me, but Cassia’s fit-out feels predictable, safe and the kind of look you’d expect to find at a neighbourhood, Instagram-conscious cafe. Then again, coffee, brunch and casual are all calling cards of the TICAA group, the owners of Cassia along with Lathlain double-act, Cosy Del’s and Laika. And while your curmudgeonly correspondent is unmoved by indoor plants and polished surfaces, he’s a big fan of personable service: something, he feels, one often finds at cafes. And at Cassia.

Whether it’s helping decode the deep food and drink menus or congratulating diners on ordering crunchy house focaccia ($8) for plate-mopping purposes, the members of Cassia’s floor team come across as people that enjoy their work an understand hospitality. Which, when you think about it, sits at the heart of the shared experience that is the (Australian) barbie. True, fire has the power to destroy but it can also create as well as bring people together.