Given the length of WA’s coast, and the volume of quality seafood we harvest from it, the answer to the question ‘where is this from’, is often further afield than can reasonably said to be ‘local’. Yet some restaurants persist in a semantic fraud, stretching the definition to breaking point.

It’s a matter of cost, and this I understand. But I also think that restaurant goers want the choice to support their local industry, they want transparency, and a menu that reads like a coastal chart.

It’s not all disappointment. There are chefs who revel in a WA catch. Melissa Palinkas at Young George in East Fremantle for one. And there’s the team at Uma under executive chef Alejandro Saravia, of Melbourne’s Pastuso.

Saravia’s menu bursts with Fremantle octopus, Abrolhos prawns, amberjack from Albany, Mandurah sea mullet, and pearl meat supplied by Paspaley in the states northwest.

A conference is in full swing, the lobby loud with delegates; the noise filtering through to the dining room, which takes my mind off the hypnotic fluro light show that’s pulsing through the pool I’m overlooking. While the atmosphere may be big brand hotel the front of house staff lift the mood, as does a well executed, brillant white pisco sour.

Straight into the Mar section of the menu, the Tiradito Nikkei with lightly smoked Mandurah sea mullet is a dish that finely demonstrates the link between Peruvian and Japanese culture and food. The sea mullet is firm, there’s crisp sweet onion and a jalapeño cream bringing a hot numbing heat that’s something of a revelation. Ceviche has become a menu staple, yet too often it’s all about the citrus and very little about balance and added texture.

Madre Perla, is a dish of Paspaley pearl meat in a turmeric based ‘Leche de Tigre’ (the citrus based marinade used to cure fish), chia seeds and fried shallots. Where the Tiradito Nikkei was about the heat, this is all about a restrained sourness, the earthy, even pungent turmeric and the texture and light sweetness of the pearl meat.

There’s more to the menu than seafood. The snack section, particularly strong, boasts 18-hour confit alpaca ribs, glazed in rooftop honey and fermented chilli. A beef tartare, my server tells me, is bound with beef fat not egg. She also tells me that beef fat has many positive health benefits. She needn’t list them. She had me at beef fat.