Perth’s best restaurants for a business lunch

From our new restaurant guide, Fin Dining & Wine, inside Fin Magazine’s winter issue.

Max Veenhuyzen

May 8, 2024 – 4.55am

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Need somewhere private where you can discuss a deal? Or somewhere special to thank your top client? Here are the best restaurants for business in Perth – tested by our reviewers with Financial Review readers in mind. Plus some pointers for the wine list from Max Allen.

Santini Grill

Meaty grill | Margaret River wines
Best for business lunch, team lunch, partner or pal, somewhere special, private dining room

There’s a steady crush at Santini, the moody blue futurist-leaning Italian bar and grill at QT Perth. Its central CBD address pulls in the law, mining, financial and medical sectors, who appreciate the fact that it’s open for Monday dinners when so many are not. Manager Steven James also notes the return of the Friday lunch over the past year. “The lunches are getting longer again,” he says, “with some bookings flowing into dinner.”

Santini Grill: cleverly designed to keep the big spenders in the house.

The big-spender tables prefer the tasting menu over à la carte, which gives them the generous bread basket, a spread of antipasto, bowls of pasta and risotto, and rib-eye off the grill with anchovy-lemon butter. Although QT hotels nurture their self-mandated reputation for irreverence, the Santini dining experience is smooth and professional, with sharply dressed sommeliers confident on the finer points of the Italo-Australian wine list. (James says the West Australian wines are moving faster than ever, especially those from Margaret River.)

Despite the big meaty grills and Berkshire pork chops, seafood is treated with a light hand, from raw snapper sharpened with harissa to wood-fired scallops. Hand-made pizza is chewy and blistered, and good to share; pasta (rigatoncini in a comforting lamb ragu, say) is equally good not to share.

There’s a semi-private 40-person dining room – the city’s largest – and Juggernaut, a smaller dining room upstairs, can take up to 16. The dedicated stand-alone Santini bar means lots of comings and goings, and the rooftop bar kicks on, seven nights a week; all cleverly designed to keep the big spenders in the house.

Wine | The quintessential Perth wine splurge, surely, would be to drink deep from the multiple vintages of Leeuwin’s Art Series wines on the list here.

QT Perth, 133 Murray Street, Perth, santinibarandgrill.com.au

Post

All-day dining | Polished | Popolare
Best for business lunch, team lunch, partner or pal, private dining room

It’s impossible to imagine Perth without the State Buildings. The three-year, $110 million project that property developer Adrian Fini launched in 2015 has resurrected (and linked) three of the city’s oldest buildings, while simultaneously bringing COMO Hotels to Australia.

From early to late, the precinct hums with activity as business leaders, mining titans and captains of industry come and go, wheel and deal. Much of this happens at Post, a modern all-day, every-day osteria set inside Perth’s first general post office.

Although breakfast is largely about hotel guests in athleisure and designer tees, the action moves to navy jackets and fitted shirts for lunch.
It’s a class act, from a keen serving team to a succinct single-A3-page wine list.

The busy kitchen has a strong grasp of Italianate flavours: a textbook beef carpaccio with capers, parmigiano and rocket and saucy rigatoni amatriciana that speaks to an elite pasta game.

Note that seats at the front are kept for walk-ins (and hotel guests) if you’re looking for somewhere last minute.

Wine | Great Italian wine selection but almost more impressive for its small but laser-sharp focus on Australian makers of Italian varieties.

Cnr Barrack Street and St Georges Terrace, Perth, postperth.com

Long Chim

Street food | Spice | Sharing
Best for business lunch, team lunch, partner or pal, somewhere special, private dining room

While it wouldn’t be right to describe Long Chim as playful, you could apply the term to David Thompson, the globe-trotting Australian chef behind this ode to Bangkok street food. And there is something of the same raffish air about the State Buildings’ basement resident.

Bright pops of colour channel the energy of the Thai capital, and DJs take to the bar and courtyard on Fridays. Despite this renegade streak, Long Chim commands a loyal following with business and legal insiders.

And while it might be Thompson’s (Michelin) star power that gets first-timers through the door, it’s the welcoming staff and the energy of the room that keep them there.

The more people in your party, the more high-definition Thai cooking you can order. Think orange fish curries heady with fermented shrimp; soft-shell crab stir-fried with southern Thai-style curry; darkly glazed duck, glass noodles, and beloved sweets such as sticky rice and mango. Set menus make it easy for larger groups, and the Silom lunch special is bargain-priced.

Long Chim also has a battery of spice-friendly cocktails and wines, while a private dining room at the back of the restaurant subtly infers that play is as important as work.

Wine | Choose from the “Long Chim Favourites Tried and Tested With Spice” section of the list – gems like La Violetta gewurz with some bottle age.

Cnr Barrack Street and St Georges Terrace, Perth, longchimperth.com

Balthazar

Clubby | Versatile | Wine lovers
Best for business lunch, team lunch, partner or pal, private dining room

For more than a quarter of a century, Perth’s business set has treated this spirited bolthole beneath the historic Lawson Apartments as its unofficial Monday-to-Friday clubhouse.

Modern-day HR policies might have dampened the city’s enthusiasm for the long lunch, so guests keen to audit one of the best cellars in the CBD have adapted by simply booking Balthazar for dinner. Even early in the week, it is best approached with reservation in hand.

While flattering lighting, booths and squeezy tables make Balthazar good for date night, it’s anyone’s guess as to how many deals have been brokered in the private Wine Room, which seats up to 14 guests. “Great wine, great food and a back-room atmosphere make Balthazar the go-to deal making venue for Perth establishment,” says Nev Power, a frequent customer.

The wine list may revel in the lesser-known, but the menu is programmed with accessibility to the fore, with the odd kitchen flourish to fancy things up. Lush cashew cream adds mouthfeel and earthiness to strips of cured kingfish, while a downpour of fine straw potatoes (pommes pailles) brings crunch and colour to a juicy beef tartare. Goldband snapper on beurre blanc with orange pops of tobiko, sweet roasted grapes and sprigs of samphire gives fish of the day a contemporary glow-up.

As demanded by such a fast-moving space, service is efficient, bordering on brisk. More people, it seems, are waiting to join the club.

Wine | Not an easy list to read (cramped text; light font; all lower-case) but persevere because it’s packed with surprisingly well-priced gems.

6 The Esplanade Perth, balthazar.com.au

Lulu La Delizia

Cottage charm | Friday lunch
Best for team lunch, partner or pal, somewhere special

They said shutting down Subiaco Oval would sound the death knell for Subi. They were wrong. Seven years after the Eagles and Dockers moved to Optus Stadium, this resilient suburb is proof that there’s life after footy. Dining options have even improved, thanks to Yiamas, Shui, Subi Continental and a handful of others.

But the suburb’s best-on-ground remains this spirited osteria that looks to northern Italy for inspiration, and lively Friday lunches bear witness to the pulling power of great pasta. There are better places to negotiate, perhaps, than in a tightly packed 40-seater, but few better places to prep the ground or to celebrate a done deal. “Being tucked away in Subiaco is a wonderfully discreet place to negotiate or celebrate a business deal,” says Julie Bishop.

A bittersweet Italian aperitivo will kick-start even the simplest starting options of antipasto or a platter of “bloody good anchovies”. Chef-owner Joel Valvasori-Pereza’s signature dishes include meatballs on a buttery polenta, tagliatelle with a Friulano-inspired pork and veal ragu, and a God-tier tiramisu.

But you will be taken more seriously if you opt for the six-course shared banquet. Staff are happy to talk you through a trove of regional varietals and their Australian doppelgängers, or the cellar’s superstar reds.

Wine | Big focus on the wines of Friuli, so revel in ribolla and friulano, refosco and schioppettino.

5/97 Rokeby Road, Subiaco, lululadelizia.com.au

Key

Business lunch
When you have things to discuss. Great food, comfortable, attentive, not too noisy.
Somewhere special
When you need a wow factor to impress, celebrate, or say a big thank-you.
Team lunch
The focus is on fun, food and sharing, the price is right and the vibe casual.
Partner or pal
The best places for the best people in your life.
PDR
Private dining room

Restaurants were visited over the four months to April 2024, with writers paying their own way.

The winter issue of Fin Magazine – plus the Fin Dining & Wine special – is out on Saturday, May 11 inside AFR Weekend.