I was very excited when I heard that Wildflower was opening because it seemed like my kind of restaurant. However, I ended up putting off visiting, mainly because I am constantly trying to save money these days, plus my recent Sydney adventure took priority.

Of course, me being me, decided to spontaneously book a table one day.

It’s quite a nice place with that lovely gum tree wallpaper/painting, and looks out towards Swan River (though the lightining meant that I couldn’t get a shot that didn’t look horrid) with the Bell Tower in view.

They didn’t have a large non alcoholic selection, and they offered a sweet or sour mocktail. Most places seem to offer the sweet/sour flavours, though I was told I could order any flavour I wanted. I was so tempted to be silly and ask for an umami cocktail, but thought that’d be just a tad too silly. Instead I went sour, and got this lovely drink.

I chose their five course degustation, which started with a selection of snacks.

Beetroot marshmallow wrapped in beetroot. Quite delicious and light!

Prawn cracker with ceviche, finger lime and other condiments. This was so tasty, but that’s also because you can never go wrong with prawn crackers.

The macaron thing at the back was a chicken liver macaron with cherry, however that wasn’t particularly standout for me.

Bread was served pretty early on, with hand churned butter with shaved macadamia. That butter was so good!

The first course – raw Shark Bay saucer scallops with native basil and dashi cream, fennel fronds, apple and horseradish granita. I love scallops. These ones were incredibly sweet and had a lovely texture! I found that the granita was a tad too cold, but hey, it is granita. I tried to be smart here when I noticed that there were little light balls above the apple jelly layer, and so I asked one of the chefs if it was puffed amaranth. He replied saying it wasn’t – instead it was some Japanese seaweed and rice sprinkle. I felt that it was a little bit of cheating to achieve umami addictiveness, but it was so tasty that I didn’t really mind. Yet.

This one was an extra course that wasn’t listed on the menu. It was a beetroot and goat cheese dish, a classic. It reminded me a little of the textures of beetroot dish from my second visit to Celcius in Adelaide (which I never posted). Basically, it was a whole lot of beetroot and goat cheese. It’s great, but a really boring combination for me. There was salt baked beetroot which was delicious, pickled beetroot and fresh beetroot accompanied with raspberries and goat cheese foam.

Marron! Yay marron. But it looks a little odd, right? As soon as this dish was presented to me, I noticed something lacking… the weird sticky out bits towards the head, like the one from Orana. However, I was pleased when I saw where the rest of the marron was – the sticky out bits were actually under the saltbush pile! There was also some lemon myrtle jam which was absolutely delicious. The marron by itself was very plain, but went well with the brown butter. Far from my favourite marron dish though (Noma wins this right now).

Up next was kangaroo with blueberries. Smoked kangaroo, blueberry, bitter chocolate, onion, seaweed. That smoked kangaroo was amazing, but it was wrapped in a seaweed crust that tasted a bit too similar to the one used in the scallop dish. It’s weird, usually I happily accept seaweed since I love it so much, but here it felt a little bit like cheating since it automatically makes the food taste so much better? At least Automata made a very different seaweed dish from what I was used to. The blueberry sauce was great, but the blueberry sago-like stuff seemed unnecessary? There was too much chocolate and forcing myself to accompany it with the kangaroo only got me halfway through the quenelle.

Arkady lamb – with warrigal greens, black sesame, sheep’s yoghurt, dried olive. Now this one was tasty! That lamb was full of flavour, and the greens here tasted great too. I always love dried olive as the flavour of it is just amazing. So much more cohesive than the kangaroo dish!

Bahen & Co chocolate mousse, baked banana sorbet, milk chocolate tuile, wattleseed. A really nice mousse log, though I was getting full at this stage. I believe the mousse was either super dark or had some alcohol in it, because it wasn’t a chocolatey chocolate mousse. That banana ice cream was delicious with such a real banana flavour. Wattleseed made an appearance here with its crunchy coffeeness.

And some petit fours. Look at that mini canele! Plus a cakey thing and a chocolate. Quite a nice end to the meal.

I feel like I’ve been spoilt with the amount of amazing food I’ve had recently, and so this was an average restaurant for me. Perhaps it was just my timing, however the waitstaff were explaining to some customers that people tend to be hesitant in consuming kangaroo. There was also a couple that got full and couldn’t finish their food (though I don’t think they opted for the degustation), and the waitstaff were commenting on how they were impressed that I could finish all that food. Actually, now that I think about it, there have been a few restaurants (such as Hartsyard) where my fellow diners and I have been “complimented” on our ability to eat a lot of food…. Anyway, it just seemed like they don’t get a lot of foodies and were catering more for wealthy people who wanted a meal (considering how classy Como the Treasury is).

I should stop fine dining for a while, my budget requires recovery time. Plus I have more Sydney adventures planned already!