Scott Bridger has spent most of his life learning the rhythms and secrets of North Fremantle. The surf, the wind, the mornings that start with salt on your skin – it’s familiar territory for the former Bib & Tucker chef.

Pearla & Co has taken over the former Al Lupo site. It’s an intimate space anchored by a 10-metre marble bar, with an open kitchen that allows indoor diners to glimpse the craftsmanship on the pass.

Pearla is a modern seafood restaurant, but not in the fussy, over-handled sense. This is food shaped by tide, season, and technique. The menu is ever-evolving, changing depending on the catch of the day and the proteins in the venue’s dry-aging fridges.

Drinks are no afterthought. Pearla’s Martini will be made with an oyster-shell gin; a Basil Smash riff is made using Australian Bottlebrush gin; and seasonal sodas make use of bar and kitchen offcuts.

Pearla & Co feels like the product of someone coming home with a clearer head: a smaller room, a tighter menu, a relationship to suppliers that can only be honed over many years. A coastal restaurant that isn’t trying to define the beach but to cook in step with it.