Shore Leave 2024: Abrolhos Long Table Lunch review

What do you get when you mix a nationally recognised chef, a sea of white linen. and 25 flights to East Wallabi Island? The Abrolhos Long Table Lunch. The Shore Leave Festival’s hero event, the lunch is a celebration of the Mid West’s strongest selling points, showcasing its scenery and produce in its most appetising form. More than 200 guests made their way to East Wallabi last Friday, where long tables laden with fresh lobster rolls waited for them. The landscape became a distraction, too beautiful to pass up for a few Instagram photos, but eventually guests remembered why they were there. Chef Scott Bridger, the owner of Fremantle’s Bib and Tucker, was soon serving up a first-class menu, starting with miso grilled octopus and Abrolhos gin-cured scallops. Cooking octopus is not an easy feat, and does not lend itself to the word “tender” unless executed perfectly, yet somehow Bridger was able to do it on a massive scale. The favourite child, western rock lobster, arrived at the table after being cooked on a makeshift grill over a trench dug by Bridger himself. “We were digging trenches on the beach, in the rain yesterday — and look at this,” he said, gesturing to the cloudless sky, with the sun beaming down. The Mid West wind behaved, leaving all the perfectly curled and straightened hair in place, but still had enough of a presence to keep away any flies. The crayfish was served alongside sea purslane, a native plant to coastal areas, with coral butter and yuzu. Having been flamed over the grill, which I could feel the warmth of from 10m away, the cray was still juicy and fell apart on the fork. Beef cooked over coals came out in quick succession, alongside saltbush and vinegar potatoes with a kombu emulsion. Foraged sea herbs atop butter lettuce with cured egg yolk and mountain pepper vinegar acted as the salad component, and balanced out the four hours of indulgence. Wines from Xanadu were perfectly paired with each course, as well as gin and tonics from Beyond Distilling. Native produce was celebrated when dessert rolled around — native plum smores with wattleseed shortbread, dark chocolate and a Davidson plum burnt meringue. Imagine a wagon wheel in a higher tax bracket. The ticket price can seem eye watering, but for an entire day of indulging, sightseeing and being waited on in the most serene setting, you’re paying more for an experience than just a lunch. For a temporary kitchen on a beach, the food was exceptional and I would have been chuffed if this had come straight from a commercial kitchen in a high-end restaurant.