Co-Op Dining - East Perth

One of my favourite degustation restaurants in Perth! Loved the flavours of every dish! Great place for a date night! Good food and great service!

Degustation Disaster, with a side of gastronomical arrogance. Honestly this is the worst dining experience I have had in years. It's not often I get food in my mouth that makes me screw up my face in disgust and race for a drink to wash the flavor out of my mouth, but this place achieved it. Corn on the cob, boiled in prawn water. YUCK !!!!!  Tasted like bin juice !! And that was after the no seafood warning on booking. The flavors were otherwise flat, with salty dishes served with extra salt. Courses had no flow and didn't compliment each other. The wine was nice, but not timed with the courses, with only 1/8Th of a glass of ultra sour beer served with the first 3 courses of the ten. I expected better for $350.00 for two. Give this place a miss.

Occasion: Not that we needed one for a degustation, however it was my partners 30th birthday. Food: We have eaten at various degustations across Australia. I like to think we have a pretty good idea what makes a degustation amazing, 5/5 and highly recommendable (I am not claiming we are experts I am high lighting the point that I can compare among degustation places). We opted for the 10 course degustation menu. The birthday boy got matched wines with the meal and I was DD. So here does (NOTE: the meal was a few nights ago, and I can not remember the names of each dish off the top of my head): Homemade rye bread with yeast infused butter  Snacks: Veal tongue and pork crackling Dishes: Summer garden Marron and peach Pork belly? and charred leek with dessert jam Roasted potatoe and onion with blue cheese and milk and watercress Lamb Mutton with plum  Ginger Kombucha Strawberry and Vanilla sorbet? with liquorice and almond topping +dessert with a milk... read more

Having looked through the website my expectations where quite high and I came for a dining experience. The food experience disappointed in way of lacking in imagination in both taste and presentation, where as the service was excellent and faultless.

There is a lot of debate between my dining mates as to the death of Degustation in Perth. Since the Loose Box and it's wizard of a Chef retired, combined with the growth on sustainability in both diets and menus, the luxury of a table of people gorging themselves for hours seems to have fallen out of favour - both for restaurants and for patrons. Enter Co-Op Dining, tucked off Royal Street in East Perth and an easy second fiddle to the loyal crowd from Amuse, nearby. But there the comparison ends.   Arriving later than the rest of the table, they fell into that fateful mistake of telling the waiter "please give us a couple more minutes for our friend to arrive before we choose our wine".  15 minutes later (at least, 15 minutes after I arrived) the waiter returned.   For a Saturday night, it was not busy.  A few tables of two, a couple of fours, and bizarrely, a table of one (which I have not seen before in a degustation restaurant, but good on them for seeing the city, right?).  In short, this was not what I would call busy.   When the first waiter returned to deliver our water, she was apparently unable to take a wine order.  Later in the evening this seemed more remarkable given her thorough understanding of the menu, and yet could not take down that we wanted two bottles of wine.  Finally the Maitre'd returned to take that order. First course was raw vegetables. In a food-type "soil" with a beetroot aioli.......... Keep in mind this is going to be $105 per person, without the inclusion of wine.  So in my head, and knowing a bit about menu construction, I am budgeting $21 per courses for the five courses booked.  So, in essence, I have now devoured $21 worth of mini vegetables.  And how many vegetables?  5.  So that's $4.20 for the radish alone.  Keep in mind that is the retail price, so imagine the cost of 5 mini vegetables!  Oh, but it's sustainable and from Margaret River.  Sustainable is a funny and ill thought out term for a vegetable, isn't it?  Because I just ate it.  And no, at $4.20, you cannot have it back.  You're not sustaining it by growing another.  So unimpressive was this first course that this is where our table conversation digressed to. Course two: Prawns.  In some kind of sauce.  But these weren't Tiger or King prawns.  No, these were the size and shape of the "prawns" I used to eat off the Sizzler buffet back in 1992.  And how many of these delicacies in my $21 bowl?  3.  So that's $7 a prawn - except let's call it a shrimp.  And let's call it $5 because that sauce clearly comes at a cost too. Next, a huge wait.  Keep in mind there are only about 12 patrons in the restaurant, and we are all having the same menu - there is no a la carte.  But 40 minutes go by, so we are hoping that the savings we have witnessed on the first two courses are going to be cashed in on the third. And it's : mutton.  Having grown up on a farm I have had my share of mutton.  Mutton used to be the old sheep that has been utilised for years as a baby factory and walking lawn mower.  So I am expecting something amazing here.  And you know what, the flavour was great.  The texture was tender, and the crunchy kale on top was also a different but very confident twist.  But at 4 mouthfuls, I am done.  And now we are really wondering what course 4 is going to be, because at the cost of mutton which is traditionally cheaper than lamb (lamb being a year or younger and mutton being an adult sheep) I am expecting a Dodo or Ortolan to appear. What we considered strange was the sudden question from the waiter as to whether we would want a cheese course too for $15pp?  Now, looking at the photos on Zomato where there is a decent cheese board we replied yes, because we were now also debating at the table where we would go afterwards for dinner. Out next comes a berry sorbet, a biscuit crumble and a cream cheese type of ...um... cheese.  And this is where concerns really kick in.  Because this, clearly, is a deconstructed berry cheesecake.  All the components are there.  It tastes really good - but that was dessert "obviously" so where is the fifth course before our cheese arrives?  Suddenly there is an OMG moment where we consider that the bread we had at the start was a course.  Half the table is in uproar, half in shock and disbelieving. We check with the waiter who laughs this off.  Of course bread is not a course.  "You've had the vegetables yes? And the prawn course, yes?  Then the egg course....." What amazes me here is that our waitress, as mentioned earlier, went to great lengths to explain each dish down to the name of the farm where the mutton came from, and yet in summary this is reduced to Vegetable/ Prawn/ Egg/ Meat/ Dessert.  So the illusion of our decadent Degustation was ruined a bit. The egg course?  For a first in my dining experience - forgotten.  Remember that 40 minute wait?  That's where that popped in.  Or should have. With a look of shock the Maitre'd went out and asked the kitchen.  Keep in mind also that there are about 12 customers in the restaurant, all on the same menu.  Yet somehow, the kitchen undercatered for about 33% of them, and did not notice that a course had not gone out (or been made).  And then the straw that ruined the evening, the Maitre'd returning to say "Oh I think you had it but have forgotten"....... It's a pity I cannot put an emoji here to show you the look on our faces. The dessert course with the berry cheesecake?  No, that was the $15 cheese course. Insert second emoji. Our dessert did arrive, but to be honest I cannot remember what it actually was. That's the impression I am left with. In apology, the Maitre'd did remove a bottle of wine, and our "Cheese" course from the bill, which was appreciated.  He was very embarrassed and his heartfelt apology actually motivated to raise my rating for Co-Op. Even with that considered, the cost in a restaurant should provide service, food and ambience.  Ambience was great - it is a tastefully decorated and relaxed restaurant.  Food wise, the Chef clearly has significant skill and aptitude.  But in terms of a degustation experience, overall this was disappointing and did not hold up to the standards of other dining experiences we have had.   If you want to experience degustation, aside from Amuse, please keep looking around Perth.  Even with the reductions off our bill, this still remained at $139 per person including water.  And you can have vastly superior dining experiences in Perth for that kind of money.