The popular Busselton sandwich shop brings its cheery brand of food and drink to a bigger, brighter address.
Cafe$
The argument: Dunsborough is one of WA’s key breakfast hotspots.
The proof: the never-ending human traffic at Noelle Cardiel and Daniel Lim’s quietly brilliant waterside cafe Sora; the perpetual buzz surrounding Merchant and Maker; plus the impossibility of getting a table at Dunsy-adjacent Goanna Bush Cafe.
To further illustrate its case, the prosecution calls to the stand the bacon and egg wrap from Mano Wraps, a perky 120-person cafe in the Dunsborough Marketplace precinct starring a comely semi-alfresco courtyard blurring indoors and out. Beyond the gentle sheen of the melted mozzarella and the thrust of caramelised onion, the wrap is essentially as advertised. It’s fried eggs. It’s cured pig – shortcut bacon, I’d say – grilled to a firm chew. It’s all the above wrapped in a, well, wrap.
Yet when eaten together, the result is a fortifying mouthful of protein, fruity sweetness and seize-the-day optimism. For anyone that’s been left traumatised by one too many lacklustre brekky wraps from the drive-through window or cafe counter, this rendition goes a long way to restoring eaters’ faith in the genre. Much of the credit for this, I reckon, needs go to the wrap itself. (Sorry bacon, sorry eggs, we still love you.)
Made of buckwheat, the frisbee-sized, off-grey wraps at Mano are simultaneously supple yet crisp: the result of a two-stage cooking process that involves making each wrap, resting it overnight and then re-grilling it to order. Once filled, each wrap gets tucked into cardboard cones with the kind of care generally used for tricky pocket square folds. In the hand, the wrap feels heavy and full, its contents rising high like the flames of the Olympic torch.
Although the cafe opened in March, Dunsborough and Mano go way back. Before there was Mano Busselton (2021) and its kiosk in Abbey’s Shed Markets (2018), there was a stall at the Dunsborough markets where Mano owners Mattia Comelato and Tracy Huang sold vegan, gluten-free wraps once a month. (She’s a vegetarian Taiwanese girl born in South Africa; he’s a former soccer talent from Italy’s Veneto region that eats and lives healthy.)
While the couple have been steadily refining Mano’s wrap recipe, their goal was always to create a flatbread comparable to the French galettes of Brittany – arguably the world’s best-known savoury buckwheat crêpe – that also honoured the piadina of Italy. I’ve been tracking Mano for around three years and reckon the crackly, malleable texture of the current wraps are on the money.
One reason for this is the ingredients in the kitchen. Comelato tells me that the combination of different buckwheat flours plus using coconut oil as a cooking medium are vital to creating the wrap texture he’s after. I’d say another reason is the open kitchen itself: a shiny, highly organised space with fast-food style screens and systems that are as visible as the cafe’s sandstone tiles, summery palette and chirpy staff.
The kitchen also looks like it cares about buying good produce, although I wonder if I’m being swayed by the knowledge that Comelato comes from a line of market gardeners. But I only learn of this backstory during fact-checking conversation. And before starting this review, I ate at Mano three times in a week and was quietly impressed by the ingredients used on each visit, from the juicy crispness of the baby spinach and the rest of the veg crammed into my Roma – essentially an Italo shredded chook and veg – to the meaty satisfaction of the thinly sliced roast pork anchoring the porchetta, a current.
It’s interesting to note that Mano Busselton’s Google Maps listing describes it as a “gluten-free restaurant” rather than, say, cafe. Having said that, the messaging in-store is light-on and the food is miles away from the sad, unconvincing doppelgangers of old. If you weren’t told that the entire menu was gluten-free, I doubt you’d notice.
One thing Google doesn’t communicate, though, is Mano’s role as an unofficial Italian embassy. The glorious gelato is from Margaret River’s Mai Tardi Gelato and can be enjoyed in many ways including via a pour-it-yourself affogato. The (gluten-free) baked treats on the counter include ricciarelli: plump and chewy almond-meal biscuits perfumed with citrus zest that hail from the city of Siena in Tuscany.
Some historians suggest that these biscuits were introduced to the country via a knight who thought that this foreign foodstuff might prove popular among locals. I can’t help but think the wondrous wraps of Mano might be heading towards a similar trajectory.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a cheery eatery serving outstanding wraps that are as nutritious as they are delicious.
Go-to dishes: bacon and egg breakfast wrap.
Drinks: Cape Effect coffee duly supported by smoothies, juices and all the other cafe favourites.
Cost: about $50 for two people.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
