A name in lights at The Flour Factory

The Flour Factory is a tribute to the Queens Street building’s humble beginnings as a flour mill in the 1900’s and includes a bakery and butchery. It's a newcomer to the Perth eating scene, situated where Venn used to be located. Andy Freeman is the man behind this gorgeous restaurant - a name you might have heard from his other successful locations Luxe Bar, Varnish on King and Darlings Supper Club. While I've only tried the first of the two, I'd heard some rave reviews about the Flour Factory... so I did what I always try to avoid doing. I went in the first couple of weeks. Was this a rookie move on my part? I guess I'd see! 

I usually make a rule for myself to try to avoid visiting new venues too soon. It's one that has served me well as I leave enough time for them to iron out any kinks any find their footing. It also allows me to creep on other visitors reviews on Yelp and Urbanspoon so I know exactly what the foodie highlights are. Oh well, I guess on this occasion I would need to be a pioneer!

Meeting up with my girlfriend Linda for an early dinner after work we walk in to the beautiful space and find ourselves amongst only a couple others present. It's definitely quiet, which I'm not sure if it's because it was around the start of the week or because of the time.

The space is funky but very simple at the same time. Grey walls and floor to give that poured concrete look with injections of wood texture via the tables, complimented by the shiny black stools. It's not exactly warm but it's definitely not cold or off putting. It feels functional but aesthetically pleasing. I actually quite like the look - especially the exposed brick wall which runs down one side.

We're presented with menus by our gorgeous waitress who looked after us so well all night. I always find myself overly appreciative when I get great service - because after all, it can sometimes be a bit of a rare commodity!

Looking at the food on offer we can see there's a large emphasis on cold meats, but with some cheeses, hot dogs and a little fancier sounding dishes. We decide to order four dishes and share between us, that way maximising the dining style we prefer but also getting to taste more. We start off with a drink each. I'm just getting over the flu so I opt for a coke, wanting a sugar rush, and Linda gets a sparkling cloudy apple. I didn't realise Emma and Tom did sparkling juices, so she gives me a small sip and I love it - slightly sour, lightly effervescent and tangy. I'll be keeping my eyes out for this in the future!

The first dish to hit our table is from the charcuterie section of the menu - 40g of jamon serrano from Spain ($14.00). It's a ham made from white pigs from Eastern Spain. that’s rubbed in sea salt and left to hang in mountainous regions. It's also one of my favourite cold meats and one I often find myself at the Re Store purchasing thin slices of to snack on through the week.

At the Flour Factory, items ordered from the charcuterie section come with pickled vegetables and a fantastic mustard sauce that's hot and vibrant. We're also brought out some house made chorizo bread which is toasted but feels impossibly soft.

The jamon is just wonderful. Soft, slightly fatty and so thin it literally disappears the moment it touches your tongue. It works really well with the pickled vegetables, in particular the onion which possesses a lovely tang where sweet and sour fight for your attention.

When you have cold meats, naturally you need to order cheese! At least that's what I was happily telling myself - and so was Linda. No wonder she's one of my favourite dining companions! After asking our waitress for a recommendation we decide to order the saporini di langa ($9.00). It's a cow, goat and sheep milk blend hailing from Italy which is described as an extremely soft cheese with a melted ice cream texture. delicate and creamy flavours with a slight tang. 

It's served with apple batons, pickled onions, raisins, apple puree and honeyed pistachios, plus a nice thin crisp bread to smear the cheese onto. As a self confessed cheese addict I knew I would love this dish and I wasn't wrong. It's a great balance of texture and taste, and the ingredients accompanying the cheese serve well in highlighting the cheese flavours. Perhaps not the biggest serving size but I think the generous side of condiments does make it feel more justified. 

The chicken Liver Parfait, rhubarb and “peanut butter” ($18.00) was a given order for us girls. Linda and I have in the past had a bit of a sick obsession with Cantina's duck liver parfait until they changed hands and the recipe somehow looked the same but lost it's vibrancy. Now we're on the hunt for a viable replacement. 

The Flour Factory's version looks so beautiful I have to actually double take. Did we order a dessert by mistake? It's two slices of a fried bread that actually reminds us a bit of doughnut sit aside the parfait block. There's rhubarb compote, dots of house made peanut butter, peanut butter powder and curls of tart radish. 

It takes me a few bites to decide if I like it, which isn't to say it doesn't taste good. I think I had to let my mind get to the stage of accepting what I would normally associate as 'dessert' flavours in being part of a savoury dish. Once I'm in though I start to really enjoy it, especially once I add some salt as it was a little lacking in the seasoning department. I'm a peanut butter fan (and as I said, a big parfait fan) so it was an easy sell for me and I actually quite like the combination of flavours. It's very different to anything else I've eaten before!

Our final savoury dish is the choripan ($14.00), which is a hot dog with a house made chorizo, chimmichurri and topped with crispy onions. It comes out cut in half for us since we're sharing (nice touch) and accompanied by sauerkraut, pickles, sweet ketchup, chimmichurri and more of that punchy mustard sauce we tried with the jamon serrano.

There's some things I like about the dish such as the crusty bun and the plethora of condiments. However the dish as a whole and the chorizo sausage didn't have the impact that I would have hoped for. It felt a little dry so I found myself using every last drop of the extra sauces to lubricate each bite. Not a bad dish by any means, but it was my least favourite for the night.

Feeling sated from our savouries we umm and ahh over whether to order dessert there or move on to a different venue for a sweet fix. In the end we figure since we're there we'll give it a go. Linda orders a blueberry, banana and walnut muffin warmed up with vanilla ice-cream on the side, plus a latte.

Her coffee isn't great she tells me, reporting back that it's bitter and a little too dark. But thankfully her dessert ticks all the boxes - screaming out it's banana flavour in each bite with the blueberries giving off that satisfying 'pop' when you bite down. It's quite a large serving so halfway through she waves the white flag of defeat and gives up. I don't blame her!

My dessert choice is the Valrhona chocolate cake, mint and aero ($16.00), though I have to admit I'm greatly tempted by the brioche doughnut filled with strawberry jam up on their counter. I am a HUGE jam doughnut fan so it was hard not to opt for this as it's been ages since I've really indulged and found one that lives up to what I would want in this kind of sweet treat.

The chocolate cake is so pretty! Dark and a little bitter, there's little piped mounds of chocolate mousse and a quenelle of rich chocolate ganache. My boy would love this dish - he's definitely the chocolate fiend out of the two of us.

I really enjoy it, but it is a bit rich for my tastes so I'm really grateful for the mint leaves which I pull apart and scoop up in each bite. It's infinitely easier to eat once I do this! I so badly want to finish it because it's so tasty but in the end the decadence proves too much for me so I decide to stop about three quarters through. This would be a perfect dessert to share with someone, or if you're a real chocolate person then you'll be right at home.

I took a risk choosing to come to the Flour Factory so early on in their opening stage, but thankfully it paid off! I'd definitely liked to come back and try some of their other meats on offer, there's some very interesting items available to choose. And I do love my cold meats and cheeses! Very up my alley. And of course, I'll have to return for that jam doughnut... I'm already wishing I'd gotten one take away to enjoy the next day!

Leaving the venue and saying goodbye to the high ceilings and natural light, I'm struck by the beautiful lit sign at the entrance. Got to love some strong branding in a manner than looks great. I'm sure this sign will be doing the rounds on Instagram in no time. Who knows, I'll probably be one of the people who contributes to that!

So I wrote the post above a few days after I visited the Flour Factory, fully intending to publish it straight away. But as I was writing an email came through inviting me to a blogger's launch event a couple of week's away. So this is a two for one post!

While my dinner at the Flour Factor had been downstairs in the main restaurant area, the blogger's event was located upstairs at the rooftop bar. I brought my boy along with me and the two of us made our way up the epic stairs to see a beautiful little private section with exposed brick and a vertical garden running up one wall.

Settling on the long cushioned benches we join fellow bloggers and partners - Perth Munchkin, Chomp Chomp and Eat Meets West. The perfect company while we kick off the evening with the two cocktails on offer.

The first cocktail is the 'Cobble', which is made up of Amontillado, Hennessy VS, maraschino, gomme, berries and peach bitters. It's served on ice with fresh mint, blueberries and orange oil. Out of the two drinks this is my boy's favourite, offering a nice kick from the alcohol that's rounded out by the sweetness of the maraschino.

My favourite is the 'Sgroppino', which the Flour Factory team have put a clever spin on a classic Italian drink. Theirs features Tosti dry vermouth whisked with lemon sorbet, aromatic Peychauds bitters and prosecco, served with fresh thyme flowers. It's refreshing and light, sparkling with a great balance between the sweetness and the addition of thyme. I just had to be careful not to poke my eye out on the thyme stick since I'm so clumsy!

After a relaxing wait filled with chatting to other bloggers and some speeches by the owner and team at the Flour Factor, platters of food start making their way upstairs. It's great hearing the explanation of how they're creating their own charcuterie meats, and really looking at the market in Perth to see what sort of gap they can fill. They're already specialising in fortified wines there but in summer the upstairs bar will also be a sherry spot, with pizzas occupying the downstairs 'backyard'. Sounds like big things are coming their way!

There was so much food that I couldn't tell you how everything tasted so instead I'll just list what we were given and highlight some of the main points. Starting off with the cheese board, we were presented with:

• Saporini di langa - a cow, goat and sheep milk blend from Italy that is an extremely soft cheese with a melted ice cream texture, delicate and creamy flavours with a slight tang
• Pont l'évêque - a cow's milk from France with buttery and warm savoury flavours with a tangy and fruity finish and has a soft texture with a pungent aroma
• Perla nera al tartufo - a sheep's milk from Italy with earthy and savoury flavours with a slightly salty finish, a hard crumbly texture with a beautiful truffle aroma
• Cropwell bishop stilton - a cow's milk from England that's full, rich and creamy with complex flavours of honey, leather, tobacco and molasses, and a spicy aroma
• Extravagant triple cream - a cow's milk from Timbon in Australia that's creamy and mild with a slight bite

Can you believe that this cheese fanatic only had one type?! I'm actually a little in disbelief recapping that in my mind. After all, cheese is easily one of my greatest weaknesses. But at least in my one choice, I selected the oh so decadent, oh so delicious triple cream. Yum. It's everything it should be - creamy, slightly oozy and rich. 

The boards housing the meats on offer at the Flour Factory are ridiculously alluring. I'm all for charcuterie and have a bit of addiction to cured meats... so much so my wallet often protests at my indulgence whenever I visit the Re Store.

On offer for us to try was:

• Ruliano prosciutto di parma - an international meat that's considered to be the finest brand of prosciutto in Italy with the finest pigs reared in the Po Valley selected and the ham making process only using pure sea salt and time
• Jamon serrano - an international meat that comes from white pigs in Eastern Spain which is then rubbed in sea salt and left to hang in mountainous regions
• Loganiza negra - an international meat that is coarsely ground, dry cured sausage with a sweet pork and pepper flavour, darkened with squid ink
• Housemade pancetta - Linley Valley pork belly cured with black pepper and secret flavours, then gently cooked to perfection
• Housemade lambcetta - cured lamb flap with garlic, rosemary and thyme flavours, then gently cooked to perfection
• Housemade spiced veal tongue - dry cured and hung for over a month
• Housemade bresaola - a cured beef hung with a mix of herbs and spices
• House smoked bacon - smoked, maple cured belly bacon cooked until crispy
• Housemade head bacon - deboned pig head stuffed with house bacon and bratwurst

Unlike the cheese, I actually got to try all of the meats! Working it like a conveyer belt system we all just slowly walked along the long bench and ate piece of meat after piece of meat. While they were all tasty, there were definitely a couple that stood out to me. One in particular - the lambcetta. 'Holy mother of amazingness' were actual words I heard emitted around me and I was in complete agreement. It was jam packed with mouth watering flavours and had the perfect meat to fat ratio that allowed it to melt in your mouth without making you feel sick.

Also quite tasty were the house smoked bacon and the moorish jamon serrano. I would have happily taken those boards into a corner with all the meats and just gorged away until I felt sick. And it would have been worth it! 

The final part of the evening was to sample two of the hot dogs on offer - the brat and the choripan. Since I was getting on the full side and I'd already tried the choripan when I visited with Linda, I made a beeline to the brat.

A housemade bratwurst sat plump and juicy, topped with sauerkraut and dill pickle, plus the housemade mustard. It definitely was the winner of the two hot dogs, with everyone around me agreeing. The bratwurst was cooked perfectly and had that nice 'snap' texture when I bite into it, allowing all those juices and flavours to flood my mouth.

Feeling happy and sated from the savoury portion of the night, I was still really excited for dessert. After all, the pastry chef is formerly from the highly renowned Vue de Monde in Melbourne. First to catch my eye is the trays of maclairs, which are a maracon and eclair hybrid. There's a variety of flavours with strawberry, peanut butter, salted caramel, coffee and Valrhona Caramel 36%% and Valrhona Dulcey 32%.

I pick one at random and to my immense pleasure it's salted caramel. Hooray! The texture is fantastic - light and a little crunchy on the outside, with a soft centre. No wonder it seems to be an instagram sensation these days!

Other desserts on offer were:

• Orange and lemon curd cake (gluten free), garnished with candied orange
• Momofuku crack pie, which is a 7 sugar and oats cake
• Valrhona caramel slice, made with Guanaja 70% dark chocolate, milk and golden syrup
• Valrhona chocolate cake with chocolate ganaches and salted caramel

I had a little bite of most of them, choosing to share with my boy so I could sample a wider range. By far and wide, my favourite was the crack pie. There is definitely a reason why they call it that! Sweet but not even slightly cloying, it's an intricate layer of flavours from the use of seven different sugars. It's crumbly on the outside, and soft and moist on the inside. It's a really amazing dessert!

What a great way to welcome the Flour Factory to Perth and celebrate the food and drink they're featuring on the menu. A big thank you to the team and to David Gardiner PR for the invite to the party! I left sooooo full, and even better had a take away paper bag with some crack pie to enjoy the next day. Mmmm!!