Few views are more panoramic, more picturesque, more heartening and heavenly than of the ocean. There is nothing more beautiful than its endless, languid kiss of the sky at the horizon: the blue planet of our blue planet that brings our Blue Mind to effect.
The sea brings us nature’s white noise. It brings us the meditative salty rhythm of Earth that heightens our senses and makes food taste better. It offers a natural and mesmerising focus with no space for awkward silences – just calming space. In its presence stress ebbs, the mind heals, the mood lifts.
Thoughts clarify, memory floods. Attention sharpens and expands. When you want to enhance an eating experience, do it by the sea.
Which is precisely what Palette has done.
And were the ocean to become too mysterious, too magnetic, too moving, there is art in which to equally immerse oneself just metres away.
Feed yourself and your soul
Partners Jade Van Herwaarde and Jason Witt, along with Christina Scanlan, artist Jade’s mother, are co-owners of the all-day littoral dining and gallery experience nestled in the pocket of Leighton Beach. More than a kilometre of soft white sand stretches along this popular turquoise beach and it proved the perfect place for this entrepreneurial trio to feed both the famished, and the souls of emerging artists.
The gallery was borne of the astonishment of finding so few spaces to hang new works – something of which Jade was rather too familiar. Making it somewhere to eat as well grew from coffee and cake to a west coast dining destination. The six-week chic refurbishment of a weather-beaten shopfront at the end of 2022 was a labour of love by two twenty-somethings in love with each other, their quirky venture, and with the luxury of the support and wisdom of someone who loves them and whole idea.
With a Curtin University Fine Arts degree, Van Herwaarde has the heart of an artist and refuses to take commission or charge fees for the monthly exhibitions Palette holds. Catering for these opening nights is at the expense of the restaurant where generosity abounds in food and thought. Over almost four years, hundreds of artists determined to make their mark on the world have featured at this fabulous eatery.
Palette’s family becomes yours
Already a family affair, Jade’s grandmother bakes the restaurant’s signature breakfast slices (much like Weet-Bix) that sell out every week. Artistry is not confined to the walls – breakfast is the likes of baklava granola with poached pears and rosewater; pavlova French toast; and cinnamon chilli oil to excite labneh served with pumpkin Turkish eggs. For something else adventurous, there’s baked ricotta hotcake alongside fresh berries, swirled with mango lime curd, white chocolate mascarpone and macadamia crumble.
That’s just for starters. With breakfast cocktails no less.
The day moves on with designed-to-share Chef’s Selection platters for $49 per person, or you may be tempted by napoletana-based blue swimmer crab linguini with chilli and Pecorino. If you’ve never had vodka in a sandwich – and everyone should – the chicken schnitzel slammed with vodka sauce, stracciatella, pesto, rocket and Grana Padano will do very nicely. Complete it with sides of a rocketing pear walnut salad and crispy potatoes with Sriracha mayo and you’ll wonder where life was before.
Taste that delivers
During a summer dinner you’ll have a hard time deciding between lamb belly skewers, the gentle kick of tuna tataki, or market fish as the focus of a plate only Palette can colour.
Big on supporting local businesses and building community, as a fully licensed restaurant and all-day food affair, with Jason as the Cocktail King and purveyor of tap beer, bubbles, red, white and rosé, there is no better place than Palette to contemplate and celebrate the inner and outer worlds of who we are. Or to take yourself away with take-away on a public holiday.
You can’t do better than that.
Address: 1 Freeman Loop, North Fremantle, WA
📞 Phone: (08) 9335 4159
🌐 Website: www.palettefremantle.com.au
🕒 Hours:
Tuesday 6am-3pm
Wednesday 6am-3pm
Thursday 6am-3pm
Friday 6am-3pm
Saturday 6am-3:30pm
Sunday 7am-3:30pm
Kitchen Service
Breakfast 7am-11:30am: weekends to 11.00am
Lunch 12pm-2pm: weekends to 2:30pm
PLEASE NOTE that dinner is available only during the summer months of November to February.