Amsara, Cable Beach – Spice Magazine, Winter 2010
by Megan Anderson
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An exclusive retreat that sleeps just four guests, but caters for big discerning appetites.
There’s a fair crowd – about seven, plus dogs – on the far northern reaches of Broome’s Cable Beach. It’s sunset on a
Friday; peak hour on the wide, tidal beach flanking the hamlet of Coconut Well. The handful of assembled neighbours wave from their vantage points on the tangerine sand, sipping drinks and watching bluenose salmon leaping in the gentle surf.
We don’t know what the others are snacking on, but it’s a fair bet that what we’re eating is better. It would be a surprise if anyone else had grilled haloumi and Spanish anchovies in their eskies. Or indeed crumbed bites of threadfin, prawn and sesame balls and minted melon with goats curd. We raise our bubbles in consolation.
It’s canapé time at Amsara, the boutique guest house up the escarpment beyond the lagoon. For a change, we’re indulging in this pre-dinner sunset ritual at the beach, rather than on the deep verandas of the house or among the lush exotics of the vast garden. When it comes to hedonistic settings, there is no danger of monotony here. The only constant is magnificent food and big-hearted hospitality.
Hosts Don and Jan Hodgson have been in training, accidentally or otherwise, for this venture for decades. When Don learned the meaning of the word sybaritic, he claimed it for himself.
“Devoted to luxury and pleasure – that’s me in one,” says the now boardies-and-Crocs man for whom wine, cheese and coffee represent a winning triumvirate.
Fortunately, he has Jan for the extra sustenance. She turns out the miraculous food that is the mainstay of the Amsara experience. Although she’s never had formal training, her intuitive sense of ingredients makes her a gifted cook.
The pair started The Essential Ingredient, the Sydney providore that grew into multiple stores and franchises, in 1987. While they travelled the world in pursuit of goods, they also developed a fondness for boutique accommodation made memorable by authentic regional food and warm hospitality. Years later, as semi-retirement beckoned, starting their own such venture gripped their
imaginations.
It took five years of searching, but they bought the Broome property in 2002 and gradually tweaked the house into the calm, tropical hideaway that opened for business last year. Two elegant guest suites sit at one end, beyond the mango grove, surrounded by palms, screened but open to the breezes.
Beautiful artworks and delectable reading material litter the communal areas and guest suites. For explorers, a sand track traverses several hectares of bush land to the often deserted beach. Back at the house, the swimming pool is shaped to reflect the lagoon below it. When the tide is right, you can float on a li-lo all the way to the sea – and back if you have all day.
But that would be to miss some of the action coming from the kitchen. Jan can make a sandwich into an unmissable event, combining poached veal with tuna mayonnaise in home-baked rosemary flat bread. Her signature dish is a simple, inventive balance of tomato jelly capped with egg puree and salmon roe.
“Jan has a wonderful flavour memory,” says Don, evoking the extensive eating out the couple have clocked up over the years. Since she has a sixth sense for what foods go together, he tends to stay out of the gorgeously appointed kitchen.
“I’m not afraid to adapt a recipe,” says the woman whose recipe book tally numbers somewhere in the hundreds. She’s well armed, but pleased to have arrived at a time when food has become simpler, having lived through entertaining in the 70s.
“I remember making a quail dish with grapes whose seeds had to be removed and replaced with green peppercorns,” she says. “These days it’s more about buying good quality tomatoes and things that you don’t have to do much with.”
Now resident in the WA tropics, Jan enjoys the ready access to local fare like barramundi, pearl meat and their own mangoes. They grow their own veggies where possible, and Jan makes her own ricotta for the breakfast hotcakes. The shoots from their commercial crop of boab trees – Don is studying horticulture at the local TAFE – are great in salads.
From elsewhere in the state they source Linley Valley pork, Cambray sheep’s cheese from Nannup, and organic chicken from Mt Barker. On Jan’s regular trips back to Sydney, she always brings back a stash of desirables: Tetsuya’s soft smoked ocean trout, salmon roe, Willowbrae chèvre, Campos coffee, and delicacies like aged balsamic vinegar that doubles as an aperitif.
When it shows up on the luxe menu, it’s a job to remember that this is an environment reliant on solar power, generators and bore water. The kitchen might be state of the art with multiple sinks and fridges, but bungarras, snakes and wallabies frequent the garden. Many of the meals are enjoyed on a manicured lawn beneath the magnificent hybrid gum tree with wide, low-slung branches but then there’s also a serious cyclone cell at the other end of the house.
Because of the seasonal extremes, Amsara is only open four months of the year, from June to September, which only serves to distil its charms. There’s a real sense of rare idyll about it. It’s 12 kilometres up the beach from the Cable Beach Club but it feels a world away. Although the road in is likely to be sealed before too long, there’s plenty of pindan dirt to suggest ‘Hideaway with Exclusive Sensibility Ahead’. The tariff – $1200 per night including meals and transfers – is a fair indicator, too.
Once there, there’s nothing for it but to let the meals, between-meals, and pre-meal canapés roll happily into one another. There’s just one essential ingredient for the pre- departure check list: a formidable appetite.