The Greenhouse – Perth Restaurant Award

http://greenhouseperth.com/
100 St. Georges Terrace
Perth WA 6000

While visiting Perth on my book tour, I asked for directions from a staff member at Dymocks to a good restaurant for lunch:

‘And make sure it’s a good one, because I’m taking a girl on a date there,’ I added, thinking of my publisher lurking outside.

Without hesitation, I was directed only a short distance away to a restaurant called ‘the Greenhouse’.


The Greenhouse restaurant is based on a “green” theme; the external walls covered in little pot plants, door handles made of shovels, a bucket of coffee grounds outside bearing the label “free compost”, the inside decorated with recycled furniture (I think I was sitting on old milk crates). The green theme is extended to the menu; with everything served there done as sustainably and organically as possible… without forgoing importing oysters.

One thing I can say about this place, as opposed to – for example – the Friends of the Earth, was that it wasn’t too hairy arsed. You know how you go to an organic store, and it seems like the staff and products have also been trained and organized organically? We received excellent service, had cocktails, and everything was hand made. Admittedly it was a bit pricey, when you’re eating pizza and pasta out of old garden pots, but still I found it worthy of an endorsement.

For the middle-class guilt salve, if for nothing else.

But that’s not why it wins the Kit's Cucina 2014 Restaurant Perth prize. Oh no, not at all.

Imagine my surprise while in the waiting lounge of the Perth airport to spot the following review printed in the Matilda section of the Western Suburbs Weekly (a local rag esteemed publication):

Lovely Beer at the Greenhouse

Ahead of the Good Food and Wine show, Maggie Beer stopped by trendy CBD eatery The Greenhouse for dinner on Thursday night. The sweetheart veteran of Australian cooking is apparently a regular when in town and cheerily posed for a photo with chef Kris Bech-Howley and general manager Treena Kosta, who asked Maggie to surprise huge fan Bech-Howley with a picture and signing of his Maggie Beer cookbook. Kosta and Beer enjoyed pork rillette, wild rice, pork belly and chicken salad from the evening menu and described her* as a “lovely, lovely lady”.

There you have it. Gold plated proof that if this restaurant isn’t winning any prizes for up-market food, it is absolutely winning the restaurant PR battle in Perth’s CBD hands down; with articles, book shop recommendations and Maggie Beer.

I rate the Greenhouse six tentacles out of eight. Enjoy, and tell them I sent you!


*  I believe the “her” in question here, described as a “lovely lovely lady”, to be Maggie Beer, not Kosta… or the pork belly and chicken salad.