How about a sunset with your canapé – Australian Financial Review, September 2009
Ute Junker discovers a private food paradise far away on WA’s coast.
Forget camel rides along Cable Beach. The best sunset experience in Broome — and the most exclusive — is only available to guests at Jan and Don Hodgson’s new Amsara Retreat, 20 minutes north of Broome.
As the sun starts to lower in the sky, the Hodgsons serve their guests canapes on a stretch of Cable Beach that’s free of the crowds gathering closer to town.
It’s not just the setting that’s special. It’s the canapes themselves. Jan, a passionate cook — “I started reading cookbooks when I was about 10 and never stopped” — whips up a delicious array of treats that may include anything from slender young asparagus wrapped in tender prosciutto to pumpkin frittata, Asian pork balls or fresh spring rolls.
If you have a particular craving, Jan will do her best to oblige. With a maximum of six guests staying in the property’s two apartments, Amsara has a flexibility large properties lack. The personal approach is the essence of Amsara. Since its opening in June 2009, it has given high-spending visitors to Broome a different option, one where the emphasis is on seclusion and utter relaxation.
In its 6.8 hectares of of grounds, old mango trees guard the front of the property and lawn stretches out to bushland at the back. Amsara prides itself on not offering too many activities.
The $1200 tariff per apartment per night includes all meals.
Breakfast might include fresh fruit, mango bircher muesli and a hot option, such as a frittata or bacon maple syrup pancakes made with Jan’s homemade ricotta.
Lunch might be an onion tarte tatin with olives and Cantabrian anchovies.
The three-course dinner might include twice-cooked cheese souffle, lamb backstrap with carrot rosti and salad or Moroccan bastia pie, finishing up with orange and pistachio kuffi with biscotti and citrus salad, a Persian love cake with yoghrt — pistachio and citrus — or a white chocolate mud cake.
For Jan, the priority is using the freshest ingredients. Herbs and vegetables have been planted and she has set up a network of local suppliers.
“I won’t serve lobster because the only lobsters you get here are frozen,” she says. “We do, however, have great local fish including barramundi and Spanish mackerel. If I serve sashimi, it’s from fish that’s been caught that very morning.”
Amsara was born out of the Hodgson’s passion for food. For 20 years, as the owners of gourmet shop The Essential Ingredient, the Hodgsons traveled the world, seeking out new and unusual foodstuffs. One of the ways they sourced local suppliers was by staying in small hotels and asking the owners and chefs for their recommendations. Along the way, the Hodgsons fell in love with the idea of opening an exclusive hideaway of their own.
After trying out various parts of Australia, the Hodgsons eventually fell in love with Broome. “It’s probably the most exotic place you can be and still be in Austalia,” Don says. ”You have building ordinances that say nothing can be higher than a coconut tree.”