East Perth’s Co-Op Dining Announces Sudden Closure

Co-Op Dining, the East Perth fine diner opened by husband-and-wife team Kelli and Kiren Mainwaring in 2012, closed suddenly on Thursday afternoon.

The Mainwarings say the decision to close was a culmination of a slow-down in trade and the rising cost of doing business. Negotiations with the restaurant's landlord to put off an increase in rent were unsuccessful and forced the couple to make the difficult decision to close.

“We were struggling month to month and working for nothing to try to keep it alive and our landlord wanted to put [our rent] up,” says Kiren who was the chef at the restaurant. His wife Kelli ran the front of house. “East Perth and the economy aren’t conducive to doing that. Everyone’s doing it tough.”

Like the Mainwarings’ first restaurant Dear Friends, the food at Co-Op Dining was a direct reflection of Kiren’s little black book of farmers and producers. Ingredients came with a back-story and postcode, and house-made cheese and proscuitto, Esperance sardine bone “pretzels” and kombucha icy-poles reflected the kitchen’s cosmopolitan spirit and strong DIY ethos. Vegetables were a focus from day one and the restaurant offered an experimental all-veg menu on Tuesdays (Kiren’s mother is a vegan). As reflected by Perth’s endangered fine diner population, the rise of mid-range dining has impacted the city’s restaurant landscape.

“A lot of food these days is glamourised fast food,” he says. “It’s a bit sad that people don’t recognise the art of being a chef and instead try to come up with a burger slightly different to what Macca’s does but charge a ridiculous amount for it. I remember with Dear Friends, you would go out and speak to diners and sometimes even drive them home. It was about looking after your guests. These days, it’s about coming in, eating, taking a few photos and leaving. It’s taken that hospitality away from it.”

As far as favourite Co-Op memories go, Kiren cites reaching 76th position on the Australian Gourmet Traveller top 100 restaurant rankings as a high point (“Considering we were in a hotel lobby, it was something to be proud of”), as was connecting with diners and small producers alike. The Mainwarings were also part of an influential wave of young owner-operated fine diners that included Restaurant Amuse, Red Cabbage and Clarke’s of North Beach. The restaurant’s greatest legacy, however, are the people that have passed through its doors.

“I’m really proud of the guys that I’ve trained that are out there and I can go out and eat their food,” says Kiren. “To think that we’ve had an impact on their lives is a huge thing to be proud of.”

The Mainwarings have set up a GoFundMe to help them pay their suppliers.