Don’t escape to Cape Lodge

Cape Lodge restaurant on the Margaret River is ambitious but it looks and feels like a function centre.

CAPE LODGE, YALLINGUP, WA

It's eerily still. Cloudless, moonlit and star-studded, the night smells of eucalypts, peppermint trees and undergrowth, the essence of Margaret River. You arrive at a portico entrance, where a few seedling herbs have been dropped into tall decorative pots to suggest, perhaps, food cred. Inside, the dining room is dim and empty; it's like you've turned up for a wedding on the wrong date.

Our reservation isn't in the diary, but securing a table's obviously not an issue. It's double draped in cheap white linen with a tea candle in a glass vase-thing. The only customers for 30 minutes or so, we are eventually among a rollicking total of four couples around a faux wood fire. With those concave plaster ceiling domes and wrought iron and glass saucer light fittings, it looks and feels like a function centre with a menu makeover and high prices.

The idea of luxury retreat built around an ambitious restaurant is nothing new. There's Lake House in Victoria, The Louise in South Australia.

Cape Lodge, on Margaret River's millionaire's row, is the luxury place to sleep Down South. The grounds are stunning, the tariff serious. But Cape Lodge's restaurant is like a tail to the lodge's dog; a dining facility to service the accommodation.

Rye and wattleseed "sourdough" arrives on a board with ordinary butter mounted on a stone, of all things. The bread's as dull as the butter. And on it goes from there.

Cape Lodge doesn't so much produce bad food as fail to deliver exciting, satisfying food. That link between kitchen and diner that should convey soul, generosity, electricity even? Just not there. And for context, the two-course menu represents a $30 entree and a $49 main. That creates expectations.

Wine mark-ups are fair, the list locally focused, but the glassware's nothing special. The Euro waiters know their stuff, but is it all good enough for a restaurant pitching this high? The food is Euro-based with a few nods to modernity that have already slipped into the realms of the passe, like chocolate "soil"; the menu itself is opaque, providing dish titles but poor explanation.

Pan fried quail comes on quince with hazelnut "espuma" studded with nuts that squeak between the molars rather than crunch. Why is that? Zucchini flowers are stuffed with local goats cheese, fried in an "ale batter" and served with witlof salad; a shredded confit duck salad with more squeaky hazelnuts, frisee and a slow-cooked egg is a nice bistro dish, but the advertised truffle is undetectable. Cauliflower soup is poured over curried florets and prawns smelling of a well-known brand of curry powder, the "crisp" capers not really crisp.

Beetroot risotto finished with jarrah-smoked cheddar is perhaps the tastiest, most successful dish:

roasted segments and crisp beet wafers adorn the vividly coloured rice. A piece of Glacier 51 toothfish tastes of little more than the oil it's been seared in; school prawns in a parsnip froth have been beheaded, which is weird; horseradish and finger lime are there in trace amounts. This fish can be terrific; what's happened?

"Chocolate emulsion" (pictured) is a mousse-like cube of pudding with "soil", salted caramel and vanilla ice cream. It's as pedestrian as it sounds. But a cinnamon-accented apple dessert with fried parsnip wafers and an anglaise-like sauce is a pleasant balance of nuttiness and fruit. An amuse bouche at the front, a chilled tisane and petit fours at the back do little to put the lust back into lacklustre. As we leave at 8.30pm, they're setting up the breakfast buffet. It's a bit sad.

AT A GLANCE

ADDRESS:

3341 Caves Road, Yallingup

CONTACT:

08 9755 6311

capelodge.com.au

HOURS:

Dinner daily from 6pm

TYPICAL PRICES:

Two courses $79; four $110

SUMMARY:

Functionable

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