First Look: The Corner Brings a Slice of the Inner-City Wine Bar Scene to Palm Beach

There’s only one thing I want from a coastal diner – and it’s not fish’n’chips or a sea view or the ability to eat oysters while sitting in sandy swimmers.

I want all my coastal diners to look like the sort of place Meryl Streep or Diane Keaton would frequent in a Nancy Meyers movie: Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, you know the vibe. The Corner, The Boathouse Group’s new cafe, bistro, providore hybrid at 1 Beach Road, Palm Beach, nails my wholesome, ultra-specific brief.

The eponymous local team opened its first Boathouse in Palm Beach in 2008. Nearly two decades later, it’s proven readily imitable, with the team copy-pasting its instantly recognisable aesthetic in five more coastal locations. But The Corner, another revamp of the digs, throws that rule book out.

There are no bright prints, no nautical stripes, no massive shells. Rather, muted forest green and turquoise tones, a large central bar and a dining room decked out in white tablecloths and bentwoods. Fans and a wall of louvred windows pipe the sea breeze around the venue. The space is more grown-up, with a changing brief throughout the day that’s a one-off in the 2108 postcode.

The menu from head chef Sam Kane (ex-Bert’s, Bistro Moncur, Guillaume Brahimi) espouses his “closed loop” philosophy, meaning the produce that’s on shelves at the providore will be on the dining room’s menu, and anything unsold will be pickled then put back onto plates, or jarred and sold.

“I want it to be a community hub,” Kane tells Broadsheet. “A place where you can come in to have a coffee and grab a loaf of bread, or come in for lunch [or a nice dinner]. I’d also love the idea of someone just coming in to get eggs.”

In one corner of the verandah-wrapped weatherboard space is a providore, selling tiny but flavourful eggs from Mussett Holdings, LP’s meat, Pep pepper, Acide pickles, grab’n’go salads and more. Kane’s been telling visitors that if you got dropped in the semi-isolated locale – up the pointy end of the northern beaches – with nothing but a credit card, you could feed yourself for weeks from The Corner.

Breakfast is a tight edit. Rice pudding with baked rhubarb and granola, maybe? Potato latkes with trout or a picnic plate including a boiled egg, Bruny Island raw-milk cheese, daily house-baked sourdough (by Ximena Fernandez, ex-Bert’s), seasonal jam and whipped butter.

The lunch menu – à la carte, scrawled on a blackboard – reflects the day’s produce delivery, so is ever-shifting. It’ll always include warm sourdough with butter (and maybe radishes), and perhaps prawns, steak, super-crispy fries and crunchy dressed leaves. A choice of two desserts to finish.

Dinner is set-menu only, an $85 three-course spread echoing the best dishes from that day’s lunch. When Broadsheet visits on opening weekend, the star of the show is the Coppertree Farms steak. Just-seared, it arrived with a hulking chunk of bone marrow, a dinner plate-sized serve of skin-on fries and that herby side salad.

There’s also a day-to-night crudo. “I got a couple boxes of green tomatoes a few weeks ago, so I made a pickle that lends itself to crudo,” says Kane. “So, till I run out of that green tomato pickle, that’s going in the dish, right? After that, I can’t flog my suppliers to go and find something that isn’t in season – I’ll just be creative and come up with new things.”

The moral of the story? Don’t get too hooked on one dish because it might not be on the menu when you come back.

“It’s by necessity,” says Kane. “We don’t want dinner to be occasional, you know? I want people to keep coming back, so every week, as seasons change, we evolve. I don’t want to be bound by a ‘six-entree, six-main, six-dessert’ kind of format. There’s a lot of those restaurants around. I’d rather keep it tight – just come and trust me.”

The Corner
1 Beach Road, Palm Beach

Hours:
Mon to Thu 7am–4pm
Fri & Sat 7am–late
Sun 7am–4pm

theboathousegroup.com.au/the-corner
@thecornerpalmy