Dinner in the Swan Valley at Chesters Restaurant

Forget Rockpool or Hippo Creek, your next fine dining meal needs to be at Chesters Restaurant on West Swan Road. The food, the wine, the service and the ambiance of this winery restaurant is I hate to say it but it’s ‘totes awesome’

I won’t mislead you; this isn’t a five fork, 6 wine glasses per table seating type of place. It is actually a rather casual rustic restaurant, which simply blew both Mr. Spittoon and myself away. We are actually both biting at the bit to get back there for round two!

Chesters is a 3 times wining gold plate restaurant. It is quite a small-scale venue so I would suggest to book ahead. I booked on a Friday morning for that night and thank-fully I got the last table for the night. Phewww!

Since it was a Friday and both Mr. Spittoon and I were looking forward to a drink or 5 we decided to taxi since it isn’t too far from where we live. I cannot remember our waiters name but he was truly awesome!! What he didn’t know about the wine he definitely made up for in his pours.

We thought we would start with a glass of the Heafod Glen (this is the winery attached to the restaurant) 2013 Verdelho since it won the critics award at Viva Verdelho 2013 for $8.50 a glass filled to the brim!! The fresh orchard fruit and honey melon flavours of the wine were a perfect complement for the Baby Turkish Bread, Dukkah and Smoked Olive Oil entrée for $12. The 50-cent surcharge for their speciality house-made smoked oil is absolutely worth it. Truly divine!
Next up we asked our waiter what he would suggest to go with the mains we had picked. He suggested a couple and he even brought us out a wee tasting sample so we could make sure they were the ones we were after. Awesome!

For the main I went for the Nacho crusted fish of the day, zucchini & coriander fritter, spiced red pepper coulis, jalapeno avocado puree, and sour cream for $39 with a glass of the Heafod Glen 2013 Semillon for $9. Absolutely divine meal, the aromas coming from that fantastically designed plate were sensational. My only critique of this meal was that I would have preferred the nacho chips to be put on last so that they were crunchy – I wasn’t really keen on the soggy soft texture of them. However I still ate every bite!
It was hard to get any conversation out of Mr. Spittoon as he devoured his, he was utterly food drunk. His Seared and roasted Katanning rack of lamb, caramelised onion Yorkshire pudding, pistachio salt, port wine & thyme syrup for $39 was AMAZE-BALLS! The lamb was cooked to perfection and the Heafod Glen 2009 Cab Shiraz at $9 a glass topped it off nicely.
By this stage I was rammed (where are those stretchy pants when you need them!) however since it had turned into a mini-degustation I HAD to have dessert! The highlight of dessert for me was a half bottle of the Heafod Glen 2013 Damascus which is a blend of Shiraz and Viognier to create a moscato style dessert wine. This $21 bottle made my eyes roll back into my head and thank goodness I was sitting otherwise my legs would have gave way. I’m not really a sweet wine fan but this gorgeous silver pink elixir seemed to have the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity that it went down a treat! Mr.Spittoon was lucky he got in quickly as I swear I would have downed it all in a couple of gulps.
To match such a delightful wine I went for the $15 Eton Mess – Vanilla scented chantilly cream, meringue, confit strawberries, strawberry champagne jelly, white balsamic syrup and vanilla pashmak which was lovely however nowhere near as insanely tasty as Mr. Spittoon’s Sticky date pudding, candied walnuts, salted butterscotch sauce with tonka bean ice cream for $15. Heaven on a plate, seriously!

Check out the Chesters Restaurant menu here.

We ended the meal with a $3.50 short black each, boy I needed something to help digest all that tucker! It’s safe to say Chesters is definitely up there in my top 3 restaurants in the Swan Valley. I can’t wait to go back again!

For more information check out the Chesters Restaurant Facebook page.