With a spate of new openings, Leederville is bolstering its impressive dining reputation. The opening of Will St, the 120-seat restaurant-come-bar from recent Bali transplant Will Meyrick, is perhaps the most impressive. 

The revered chef is known for Bali restaurants, Mama San, Sarong and Hujan Locale, though his journey from an upbringing in the UK has taken him from formative experiences at Longrain and Jimmy Liks in Sydney, before twenty years working in Bali, Thailand, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and then back to Bali. Will St is steeped in these decades of experience, delivering what Meyrick describes as “solid, modern Asian.”

The lunch and dinner menu is designed to share with small plates like smoked eel betel leaf, kelp aged kingfish, and pork fat Chiang Mai sausage. Larger plates include woku wood-roasted marron curry and char siew pork hock with braised miso cabbage, Sichuan pickled cucumber, Davidson plum, hoisin, and a side of Mandarin pancakes. It’s Meyrick’s signature dish. Muslim style goat nihari is inspired by the chef’s time exploring Calcutta. “Traditionally served at breakfast amongst the Muslim population of the city, it’s a rich and spicy comfort food, slow-cooked in saffron, mustard oil, yoghurt and complemented with warragal greens,” he says.

Meyrick is clearly enjoying the Western Australian pantry namechecking Akoya oysters from Albany and marron which is endemic to the southwest. “I haven’t been able to use produce like that for a long time in Indonesia” he says. “Hapuka, blue-eye cod, all that kind of stuff. You don’t get deep-sea fish in Indonesia and if you do it’s bass groper or whatever, but it’s normally reef fish. So, I’m working with completely different textures and profiles.” 

Meyrick says that adapting your cuisine into a new culture brings something new to food. “Recipes are still the same, authentic, but as one lady told me when I was in the middle of Sumatra trying to get down all the recipes, she said you can’t copy me. Every hand is different, so whatever you do, it’s going to be completely different, whether they give you the recipe or not.”

Meyrick has used native ingredients for substitutions, so instead of using cassia leaf there’s saltbush which has a “similar characteristic: slightly bitter, slightly coarse, that we put into curries,” says Meyrick. Using native redback ginger, which is slightly more subtle than torch ginger, and pepperberry leaves instead of using lime leaves in curries, helping to “highlight all the different peppers that are in the curries.”

Will St isn’t solely about Meyrick, with interiors designed by Paul Lim of Mata Design Studio; described as a timeless and elegant interior which “reflects the Australian landscape, with its warm, natural, earthy tones.” Tim Bartholomew, former business partner and head chef of Hujan Locale and Billy Ho joins Meyrick, as does mixologist Laurie Eaton previously of Melbourne’s Eau-de-Vie. In putting together a more bespoke drinks programme you’ll find Will St Asian Inspired Gin, Will St Native Sourced Gin, and Will St Rice Lager, which was specially produced by South Fremantle brewery, Running with Thieves. This collaboration “allows greater control and means we’re also providing a more holistic offering for our guests,” he says.

Meyrick’s time in Perth, which was planned pre covid, is an “opportunity to really understand a little bit more about what ingredients are coming from within Australia itself and how we can incorporate them into dishes; looking at the migration as well of Indonesians, we ended up seeing a historic connection with Indonesia,” he says.

“This time around I came back to Australia more as an immigrant than a backpacker, with my family, who are Indonesian. We’re connected to the Asian community, to the Indonesian community, and connected easily to backyard growers, and warungs out in places like Morley and Canning Vale that normally any western suburbs person would never have gone to. But because I live in a slightly more Asian community, we’ve got a very different view of things.”

Will St
228 Carr Pl, Leederville, WA
Wed – Thu 4pm – late, Fri to Sun 11:30am to late
willstreetperth.com

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