No. 1 The Bank Bistro, Perth - Restaurants in Perth | s1play.com

Bank a bonus

Review published on 28/02/2011 © Sunday Herald

January is the month when chefs head off to the sun to recharge their batteries after all those long, gruelling months at the stove. Instead of sweating it out in the kitchen, they head off to countries like Thailand and sweat on the beach. While there, they reawaken their jaded appetites with exciting local food and come home all fired up, resolved to experiment with exotic flavours.

When you look at chef Graeme Pallister’s new menu at No. 1 The Bank in Perth, you wonder whether he’s just been out east. As always, local ingredients of tip-top provenance are his bedrock, but now there’s an explicit flavour of Asia. Think Chiang Mai chicken broth, not your granny’s version. White wine has been ousted in the Shetland mussel soup to make way for coconut milk, chilli and coriander. Carnoustie pork belly comes with flash-fried squid and chilli caramel. The all-time classics like steak frites with béarnaise sauce are still there – few chefs either urban or rural dare pension them off – but zingy flavours have been ushered in to make the menu feel fresh and stimulating.

You can take for granted that Pallister is a clever enough chef to pull off this cultural exchange. My home-smoked duck and pineapple salad with toasted cashew nuts, dressed with chilli and just a whiff of pungent fish sauce, made a great early spring starter with the meatiness of the delicately smoked duck and nuts adding body to the fruity, leafy salad.

Across the table, there was evidence that he hasn’t thrown out the adorable baby with the bath water in the form of a brilliant risotto with finely shredded oxtail in oozing, truffled rice. This was the best risotto I have tasted in years, a triumph of balance. It was blissfully savoury and rich with beef stock, with any potential stodginess cut by the acidity of wine. The rice was chalky, as it should be, and not heavy or boring because it was balanced by an equal amount of melting meat. The whole thing was rounded off with abundant parmesan. On second thoughts, maybe Pallister has just got back from Italy.

Our main courses were on home territory and indicative of the trend towards cherishing previously underused, undervalued ingredients. The steak pie was filled not with stewing steak, but ox cheek and tail meat, cooked to luscious collapse, if slightly too sweet (perhaps with port or other sweet wine) for my taste. Its airy pastry was deliriously buttery. A crisp-skinned mackerel fillet came in a twosome with crunchy mackerel croquettes, spiked with lively lemon zest. The crunchy pepper and lime yogurt salsa wasn’t quite up to the big personality of the fish. It needed a stronger flavour, like a Spanish romesco sauce with roasted peppers and toasted almonds, sharpened with sherry vinegar, or a proper pickle, to match it.

Accompaniments were no side attraction, but worthwhile in their own right: admirably caramelised root vegetables, notably terrific Jerusalem artichokes. There was no ignoring the thrice-cooked chips made with the venerable Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy variety, which dates from 1899. It may not surprise you to hear that they were fabulous.

The steak pie came with a smooth, white mash made with the ultimate masher, Arran Victory, another vintage Scottish horticultural gem that dates from 1918. Such attention to ingredient pedigree underlines how this is an establishment that makes much more effort than most to give you true value for money when it could palm you off with inferior ingredients and charge the same.

Desserts come from a European culinary stable, with one foot in France, the other in Britain. Pricing is puzzling. Given the low cost of the ingredients, £6 is too much to ask for the inevitable sticky toffee pudding, but our desserts seemed fairly priced, given their calibre. A chocolate nemesis passed the test of being uncompromisingly dark and luscious without being sickeningly rich. Its star anise ice cream made a sympathetic partner. My selection of ice creams – vanilla bean, chocolate and orange – were of a seriously professional standard.

Restaurants in hotels rarely serve food worth going out your way for, but No. 1 The Bank is a glowing exception.