Chef Aaron Carr is unquestionably one of Western Australia’s most celebrated and respected chefs, a career spanning decades and, along the way, more than a few bright young cooks mentored under his watch.
Carr is set to bring his much-loved Yarri Bar + Restaurant to Crown Metropol this winter, a six-week residency running from 28 July to 5 September in the space formerly home to Bistro Guillaume. In the Noongar language, Yarri is a eucalypt found throughout the south west, its wood used in the restaurant’s design, and maybe the parallels don’t end there, the restaurant standing solid on the roots of chef Aaron Carr and the wider team he is bringing with him to the residency.
Across three and six courses, Yarri’s Crown menu will move through Yarri sourdough with Wulura extra virgin olive oil, grilled marron with harissa and saltbush, burnt cabbage with miso and yuzu kosho, kingfish with green tomato aguachile and avocado, and emu with smoked oyster and bush tomato. Mains lean into fish with celeriac and nettle, cauliflower with eggplant vadouvan and cashew, lamb with broad beans and anchovy, or a 650 gram grass fed sirloin finished in black garlic and miso butter. Dessert closes with bitter chocolate, blackberries and Geraldton wax, or St John’s Brook with carrot and orange marmalade.
We asked Carr what the opportunity at Crown Perth means to him and the team, and what Yarri looks like away from home.
Yarri is so tied to Dunsborough and that south west landscape. What do you think will translate most naturally into a city dining room at Crown, and what’s the hardest thing to bring with you?
I think what comes across anywhere is the way we cook. We just try to let great WA produce do the talking and keep things honest and approachable. Doesn’t matter if it’s Crown Perth or Singapore, the philosophy and approach remain the same.
The hardest thing to bring is the feeling of being in Dunsborough itself. At Yarri, you’re surrounded by the landscape that inspires the food. We can’t recreate that, but we can bring the flavours, the produce and the team that make Yarri what it is.
Food wise, our sourdough is going to take some time to master.
You’ve worked alongside Massimo Bottura and Matt Orlando, two chefs with very different sensibilities. What did each of them teach you that still shows up on the Yarri menu today?
They were both very different, but I learnt a lot from each of them. Massimo showed me that food can tell a story and doesn’t always have to follow the rules, Matt taught me to really respect every ingredient, and to think about where it comes from and how you use it.
Those ideas and philosophies still shape the way we cook at Yarri.
The three and six course formats have built a loyal following at Dunsborough. Will the Crown menu be a direct transplant, or are you rethinking anything for a Perth audience?
It won’t be exactly the same. For a start, we don’t have a wood fired oven. Crown has a no risk policy that doesn’t allow us to use fire. The format stays the same, and the dishes will evolve with what’s in season and what we have available from our garden.
We want people who’ve been to Yarri before to recognise what we do, but we also want to make the most of being in Perth and engage with new customers who may never have dined with us before.
Taking over a space that was Bistro Guillaume for six weeks is a specific kind of challenge. How much of the room will feel like Yarri, and how much are you working with what’s already there?
This is going to be the biggest challenge, and we recognise that it will never be Yarri, but the room already has a great base, so we’re not trying to completely change it, just work with what we have. I think what makes it feel like Yarri is the people, the service and the food. It’s a pop-up, after all.
Your food leans on a network of WA growers and producers built over years in Dunsborough. Who are you bringing up with you?
We’ve worked with a lot of the same growers and producers for years, so we’ll be bringing as many of those relationships with us as we can. They’ve played a big part in what Yarri has become, and we want that to come through in the food. We’re also going to change the menu halfway through the pop-up, around the three week mark, to keep things moving with the season. Yarri is the home of Snake + Herring (and Thunderstone) wines and these wines perfectly complement our food. We’re bringing a selection of our wines to feature at Crown so we can offer our signature wine pairings which each menu.
Winter produce in the south west and winter produce as Perth diners know it aren’t always the same conversation. What’s guiding the seasonal thinking behind this particular menu?
For us it’s pretty simple, we cook with what’s looking best and what our garden has available. I’ll be bringing things like saltbush, warrigal greens, native succulents and hopefully some brassicas and leaves. As much as possible, really. We don’t try to overcomplicate it, we just let the ingredients shine, as we have always done at Yarri.
If this residency goes well, is a longer term Perth presence something you’d consider, or does Yarri’s identity depend on staying planted in Dunsborough?
That’s a good question. Right now, our focus is on making this residency the best experience we can. Yarri will always have its heart in Dunsborough, that’s where the restaurant was built and where our story began. At the same time, we’re excited to introduce more people to what we do, and we’ll see where the future takes us.