The new Nusantara food movement is gaining momentum across southeast Asia. With the arrival of Magnolia, Perth is also in on the action.
Asian$$
Magnolia is no colour-by-numbers Asian restaurant.
There are no waving cats, dragon murals or largely “oriental” design choices. The menu is halal and features zero pork or alcohol. Crucially, it’s also a restaurant that pops up inside another restaurant after the staff there call it a day.
By day, this glass letterbox at the bottom of the Vic Quarter apartments houses the Victoria Park outpost of Modus: a breezy parlour of unpolished concrete, blond wood furniture, splendid coffee and a display cabinet teeming with croissants, crullers and other treats from Modus’s off-shoot, Goods Bakery.
By night – or at least the nights that team Magnolia kidnap the space, anyway – the café’s Scandi-cool makes way for something a little more streetsmart. Gauzy curtain is hung in the window. Tables get dressed with thick maroon tablecloths, a square of lace, plus a prophylactic top-sheet of clear plastic. The lo-fi grooves of the morning get replaced for snappy snares and the synthesised funk of 80s electro and street soul.
While the counter has been emptied of croissants, those pastries – or, more accurately, their off-cuts of buttery, laminated dough – have been born again as flaky roti flatbreads: the perfect sponges for sopping up yellow curry, prawn sambal, sweet cucumber achar pickles and other dishes gleaned from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and other destinations that feature on the family trees of Anisha Halik and Jacob D’Vauz.
If you remember Halik and D’Vauz from Special Delivery at the Doubleview Bowls Club, you’ll be familiar with the way they won hearts and filled tummies with mighty interpretations of Australian classics supplemented by char siu, curries and other Asian treats. For their Vic Park era, they’ve retained the two-night-a-week format of Special Delivery – only this time it’s Thursday and Friday – but reversed the menu’s polarity.
Now, their focus is on the flavours that define the Malay archipelago, as parsed through the memories of two migrant third culture kids that grew up navigating both east and west. (The playlist, for instance, features songs that D’Vauz’s breakdancer dad had on high rotation around the house.) The result? A singular, unexpected and deeply personal night out that Perth needs more of.
The city’s dining scene also needs more big-hitting vegetable dishes a la Magnolia’s roast cabbage and snake bean number: an unassuming $12 side-dish brimming with main character energy. Yes, the infrared Zesti oven is part of the dish’s success, but the key is steeping the greens in the bold Vietnamese dipping sauce nuoc cham. Some fancy fish crackers go into the bowl along with a landslide of serundeng: a rich, nutty assembly of toasted grated coconut and spice that tastes like the equator. More please.
As is customary in the Malay world, eating here is about sharing. Styled on the Javanese grilled beef dish iga bakar, the beef rib is as big in size as it is flavour: a blackened tranche of bone straight out of The Flintstones opening credits with fat hunks of tender Angus flesh (slowly braised, crisped up and sliced for easy access) dressed with a dense peanut sauce and inky, sweet kecap manis that has the footspeed of a glacier.
If you translated ikan assam pedas to English, you’d get “fish sour hot”. Granted, this wasn’t as bright and zesty as earlier versions, but there’s still enough zip and fire in the sauce chaperoning the market fish – tataki-style tuna, nicely pink in the middle – to live up to the dish’s billing.
As written earlier, the mains are sizeable, which might explain why most other tables passed on the snacks and went straight to the star attraction. While the smaller plates read as broadly Malay, they didn’t hit quite like the main courses, the dishes themselves more notable for technique rather than the thrust of spice. The seasoning in the tall pie tee shell filled with raw beef felt heavy-handed while an understated scallop crudo erred the other way, the dish’s combination of lime juice and a guacamole-like mass taking it more towards Mexican ceviche.
Not that deviating from south-east Asian restaurant operating practices can’t produce wins. Restaurant manager Chrissie Lam’s friendly patter is the polar opposite of the brusque angry auntie while Michael Rainone’s polished riffs on Ribena floats, ice tea lemonades and other Malay favourites prove no-booze has to be boring.
And the final surprise? The sarang semut, a hefty baked kuih flavoured with burnt caramel that’s also known as ant’s nest cake on account of the “tunnelling” that occurs as it cooks. While this didn’t have the crumpet-like pores found in textbook specimens – this one’s texture was closer to sticky date pudding – it managed to, improbably, feel simultaneously dense and light.
To the side, a small bowl with a malty Milo-esque powder plus a bespoke Chicho Gelato gelato that captured the plushness and subtle bitterness of Malay-style milk kopi: reason enough, I reckon, to run the end-of-month bookings gauntlet when the next lot of tables get released. Halik and D’Vauz – and their crew of like-minded allies – are just getting warmed up. If they keep continuing at this rate, Magnolia has the potential to bloom into something special.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a singular, spirited pop-up that’s giving Malay food the attention and respect it deserves.
Go-to dishes: roast cabbage and snake beans with serundeng, malt sarang semut.
Drinks: Asian soft drinks, juices and upmarket spins on popular Malay drinks plus some Heaps Normal non-alcoholic beers.
Cost: about $170 for two people, excluding drinks.
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.
