Fuyu, Perth: restaurant review

Glorious food is no longer enough. We also expect an energetic ambiance, even in a great restaurant like Fuyu, Perth.

The high-table room in Fuyu blurs bar and dining. Picture: Philip Gostelow

A group of six women take their seats at a bare timber table in the part of Fuyu’s dining room we’ll call The Traditional Bit. Chairs, tables, (too-low and too-soft) banquettes… They settle, nest, get some wine and, having had some kind of conference about the table, get up and move to a high table to perch on stools in what we’ll call The Non Traditional Bit. That part of the restaurant which blurs bar and dining.

I kind of wish we’d done the same. In a restaurant that is low on theatre – a part of the eating-out experience most of us have become accustomed and maybe even a little addicted to – Fuyu needs all the help it can get.

Down in The Traditional Bit of Fuyu – chef/restaurateur David Coomer’s reincarnation of Pata Negra – it’s no buzzy, racy mod-Asian with modest prices. But with paper napkins and cutlery stored in cylindrical containers at each table, waiters who annoyingly say “not a problem” and “not a worry” constantly, and really nothing to see, touch or feel that you haven’t seen before, it’s hardly a high-service/high-design culinary temple, either. The restaurant occupies a slightly confusing middle ground.

Fortunately, as many in Perth know, Coomer is a bloody fine cook with a solid handle on Asian flavours, as he proved for many years at Star Anise. And if prices at Fuyu reflect the affluence of the restaurant’s Nedlands constituents more than the flattening local economy, they are probably worth it.

There are highs, and more modest successes. And if you’re a traditional wine drinker hell-bent on a Barossa shiraz or Hunter semillon, you’re in for a parochial re-education: Fuyu’s wine list is all-WA, with just three exceptions. I like that. Dishes at Fuyu (a kind of persimmon) are the chef’s take on standards with influences from, as the website says, “Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea and Australia”. And for those of us who feel the whole provenance thing has gone too far, virtually no attempt is made on the menu to identify produce or its origins.

A couple of things will make you roll your eyes in pleasure. Chief among them is a take on the Thai sweet/savoury conundrum ma haw that teams the familiar elements of pineapple wafer, sticky caramelised meat (duck neck) and peanuts with a seared scallop, crisp-fried shallot and a kaffir lime leaf garnish. It is bloody glorious even at $8.50 each.

So too is an individual fried pastry not dissimilar in shape to a samosa but with an intriguing crisp/chewy shell, the semi-puff pastry revealing concentric circles, the layers of folding. Inside is a smoky pumpkin and lentil filling augmented by a tomato oil pickle to the side. Straight from the kitchen, they sing with dark spice and curry leaf.

Fuyu’s reading of the evergreen beef tartare is good, too, the meat dressed with Vietnamese herbs and salt-cured duck egg and served with vividly pink beetroot tapioca wafers and whole betel leaves. A bit of DIY fun, and good beef, too.

Nuanced: Vietnamese salad in a crisp rice flour and turmeric ‘crepe’. Picture: Philip Gostelow

Sweet and savoury collide happily in a Thai/Korean hybrid of watermelon salad with grape tomatoes, radish and a dark, mysterious gochugaru (Korean red dried chilli) dressing. And a Vietnamese salad of crab, mango, shoots and herbs, dressed with nuoc cham in a crisp rice flour and turmeric “crepe” is just as fine. Light, super-fresh, nuanced.

So it disappoints when a kind of Korean-accented salami, served with kimchi, has been sliced without first removing the casing. And half a crisp-fried duck in pieces, with a lively plum sauce to the side and massive fronds of fleshy, barely char-grilled mustard greens, is a boring and, at $58, expensive menu protein hero. A poor choice; a dish that doesn’t do the kitchen justice.

To me, Fuyu is a reminder of how eating out has changed, and we the dining pubic have changed with it. We expect energy, drama, fun and good food. The last bit, on its own, just isn’t quite enough.

Address: 26 Stirling Hwy, Nedlands, WA | Contact: [phone], fuyu.com.au | Hours: Dinner Tue-Sat | Typical prices: Small dishes $7; large $27; dessert $16 | Summary: Good food. But is it enough? | Like this? Try: Long Time, Brisbane; Ferment Asian, Tanunda | Rating: 3 out of 5