There is a particular kind of restaurant that cannot be manufactured — only earned. Must Winebar, on Beaufort Street in Highgate, is that restaurant for Perth. Russell Blaikie opened it in 2001 with a simple premise: serious wine, proper French bistro cooking, a generous corner-building room on a busy street, and no ego. Twenty-five years later, Must is not just a Perth institution — it is the Perth institution. The neighbourhood wine bar that every great city has, and that most great cities envy.
The room is compact, convivial, and pitched exactly to the bistro ideal: timber floors, leather banquettes, a long marble bar that seats twelve solo diners comfortably, mirrors that catch the light from the street. Sommelier Stefano Madau has presided over the wine programme for years and built a list that runs past 500 bins — roughly half French, with real depth in Burgundy, Rhône, and the smaller producers of the Languedoc, balanced by Italian, German, Austrian, Australian, and New Zealand bottles chosen with the same care. The by-the-glass programme is the most serious in Perth; a flight of Beaujolais crus, each a revelation, is not an uncommon order.
The kitchen, under long-time chef Kingsley Sullivan, cooks the bistro canon with genuine precision. Steak frites (Cape Grim sirloin, béarnaise, house-cut chips) is the signature and a national-class version of the dish. Terrines are made in-house and run with cornichons and grain mustard. Moules marinière on Monday nights are a Perth-wide ritual — $32 for a kilogram bowl and a glass of Muscadet. Duck confit, rabbit in Riesling, cassoulet in the cooler months. None of it is reinvented; all of it is cooked with the confidence of a kitchen that has made it a thousand times.
The bar is the move for solo dining. The counter faces the shelf of wines and the pass, and the bar team will build a progression of glasses to match whatever arrives from the kitchen. A Tuesday night at the Must bar — a plate of charcuterie, a bowl of moules, a glass of something Rhône — is as civilised a solo dinner as Perth offers. The acoustics can get loud at peak; aim for a 6pm or 9pm sitting if you want to hear the table across from you. Dinner here is one of the city's great pleasures, and one of its greatest equalisers: investment bankers sit next to chefs on their night off, regulars are greeted by name, and the wine rewards whatever you're willing to spend.