The food is where Dempsey's training asserts itself. The menu is compact and changes with the seasons and with what's available locally.

The word prodigy gets used about young chefs so often it's lost most of its force, but Allen is a reasonable candidate for the real version of it.

The Meringandan does not have a chef's bar or a natural wine list or a seasonal tasting menu with a chef's note explaining the provenance of the soil. It has chicken parmigiana. It has bangers and mash.

...and something vaguely Alsatian going on. Provence via Perth, basically.

The six course tasting menu reads like a love letter to a fifty kilometre radius

Malbec is not here to be overthought. It wants fire, salt and something politely and properly charred. Ideally steak. Preferably outside. It is generous, unfussy and reliably a good time,

Lunch moves at its own pace, not slow for effect, just steady. Dishes land clean and exacting, vegetables leading more often than not, treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for proteins.

From Ningxia, along the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains where vineyards cling to the edge of desert and altitude does as much work as ambition, this is a Chardonnay that feels both fluent and slightly out of step, in the best possible way.