Among WA’s fine-diners, Wills Domain is a winning combination of chef Seth James, an increasingly slick front-of-house team and a not-so-secret weapon: sweeping vineyard views. While the casual carte has been sating appetites, it’s the tasting menu that has defined the draw of James’s brigade.

Snacks are quickly fired from the kitchen: some just simple bites highlighting produce, such as a cube of crocodile with white pepper, while a scallop and nannygai two-hander served on beach pebbles, shrouded in mist, offers a theatrical start. A pommes dauphine sphere – hot, crisp and oozy to the bite – is topped with WA-harvested scampi caviar, a vivid sapphire spectacular that hints at the state’s seafood pedigree with every pop: file under flavour bomb. Basics are also on point: a house-baked loaf cracks satisfyingly as you break the warm crust and load the soft insides with camembert-rind butter.

While wine service is the preserve of the front of house, it’s the chefs who serve each dish – explanations mercifully short – before they duck back to the kitchen. Plates show technique and imagination: James is good at bringing hero ingredients to the fore, such as Albany flathead wrapped in paperbark, with ribbons of squid and onion. Consistently a contender for WA’s best.