Cape Lodge

Cape Lodge Restaurant is the gastronomic dining room of Cape Lodge — a luxury country-house property on Caves Road in the Yallingup wine subregion, opened in the 1990s and continuously operated as Western Australia's most polished country-house hotel since — and is one of the great dining rooms in Western Australia. The dining room features classically prepared French-influenced country fare with the best of Margaret River's produce.

Chef Tony Howell runs a contemporary French-Australian menu with deep Margaret River regional sourcing — the kitchen sources directly from local farms, the on-property kitchen garden, and the fresh seafood from the nearby pristine Cape-Naturaliste oceans. Signatures include a hand-cut WA-coast tuna tartare with finger lime; a slow-cooked Margaret River Wagyu shoulder with juniper jus; a hand-rolled tagliolino with WA black truffle; a wood-fired WA-coast snapper with samphire and lemon confit; the famous 'Cape Lodge soufflé Grand Marnier' for the dessert course.

The wine list runs to 700 references with deep Margaret River smallholder coverage and a respectable comparative-Australian section. The Cape Lodge cellar's Cabernet Sauvignon vertical (Cape Mentelle, Vasse Felix, Cullen, Voyager Estate going back to the 1990s) is one of the deepest in the region.

The dining room and outdoor garden together hold seventy-two covers. Service is country-house-grade — uniformed captains, choreographed plate-arrival, exact pacing.

Cape Lodge is the proposal-grade dinner in Margaret River — the country-house setting is the conversation, the Cape Lodge dinner-and-stay format means a complete proposal weekend is easy to arrange, and the deep wine programme is genuinely distinctive. Book the corner two-top in the smaller dining room.