FRENCH, NOT FANCY
Pig’Halle brings a little bit of Paris to Perth
Sometimes a restaurant provokes the strangest sensations. Visiting Pig’Halle in Perth, for instance, made me think of John Wayne and James Stewart in John Ford’s great western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. That’s the movie, you will recall, that includes the immortal line ‘This is the West, sir...when the legend becomes fact, print the legend’.
What is ‘authenticity’ anyway? Pig’Halle is a good place to ponder such a question. Just in case the name wasn’t enough and you remained in any doubt, the Parisian street signs, drawings of the Moulin Rouge, crimson-clothed chairs, and a large mirrored map of the Paris Metro along one wall all scream ‘this is a French brasserie’. It isn’t Paris and it isn’t even very much like any Parisian bistro I’ve eaten in, but that’s not the point. The point is it feels like an idea of what you feel Paris is meant to feel like. It’s fake but in an authentic fashion.
Which is fine, because sometimes reality doesn’t bear too much examination. In any case, it soon becomes clear that Pig’Halle is one of those restaurants you’d love to have on your doorstep. Its owners, Paula and Herve Tabourels, say they’re not interested in Michelin-style cooking because they’d like to see their customers every week, not just once a year. I don’t know about weekly, but if I lived in Perth I’d cheerfully eat here on a monthly basis.
Sometimes, you see, there’s no need to bother reinventing things that work perfectly well as they are. A French brasserie should be a French brasserie and nothing else. So you look at Pig’Halle’s menu and you make a mental check-list: Snails? Yup. Bouillabaisse? Present.
Mussels? Mais oui. Steak tartare? That’s here too. Confit of duck? Welcome back, old friend. An assiette of pork, served several ways? Splendid.
Let’s start with grilled mussels served with hazelnuts and a smoked salmon butter. A dozen of these arrive in a small ceramic dish, each requiring to be excavated from their little nests. The hazelnut exists more as a texture than a taste but the salmon-mussel combination is excellent and sophisticated. Serve with a hunk of bread and a small salad and this would, on its own, make an ideal light lunch.
On the other side of the table, steak tartare is done properly. This, alas, is not always the case. It comes freshly cut by hand (you can just tell) on a slate, with little trails of caper, shallot and mustard that allow the diner to mix their steak precisely the way they like it. A simple, classic dish perhaps but one that’s rendered honestly and with some panache. We liked it very much.
Better still were pig’s trotters wrapped in a parcel of feuille de brick pastry and accompanied by (excellent) chips and pickled vegetables. This was a triumph: the salty, gelatinous pork meat being offset by the sharpness of the pickles and then comforted by the soft, rounded, flavour of the chips.
Meanwhile, flank steak with a peppercorn sauce and dauphinoise potatoes was a classic – and classically simple – bistro dish. The steak, as befitting this cut, was packed with flavour and the dauphinoise were better than some I’ve had recently at restaurants three times as expensive as Pig’Halle. The one disappointment was an unimaginative – and large – serving of broccoli plonked alongside. A salad or remoulade of fennel or beetroot would have been better and more interesting.
Desserts were admirable too. A ‘ modern’ pear tarte tatin might have been mildly undercooked but it was more than rescued by a deep toffee sauce and a richly comforting clotted cream ice cream. A dark chocolate and pistachio delice looked a treat and tasted just as good, ably supported by candied nuts and a chocolate sauce. Best of all, however, were the home-made macaroons, raspberry and salted caramel respectively. Sweet and unctuous, we reckoned them ‘lush’ and made a note to pop in and purchase a box any time we happened to be in Perth.
So this is a fun and friendly place in which to eat. Pig’Halle knows what it is trying to do and, for the most part, hits the mark with precision. It is just the sort of restaurant you’d want to have on your doorstep. Good food, cooked with precision but without pretension, it delivers what it promises. And it does so at remarkable value too.
What more could you want than that?