Welcome to Essex Restaurant

Good selection of mostly seafood, well presented and good quality

Attentive wine and food service and timing between courses about right.

Very pleasant surroundings with semi separate rooms.

Definitely worth going back. Great food, good service.

Never been before, but took a punt. The food was better than expected. Oysters kilpatrik were the best I have had. Steak, cooked to perfection. Veggies not over done and good choice on wine list. (we had bottle of Driftwood Cab sav)

Service was exceptional, but we did get there right on six. I do believe if you want good service in any restaurant you need to get there early. Waiter was friendly and on the ball the whole evening.

Great atmosphere, although a real fire would have added a better feel. But other than that it felt great sitting there and didn't want to leave.

Overall, great evening, recommend to anyone. But do book and get there early. Will definitely go back. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The food was lovely and well presented.

It took a while to get asked for a drink, and by the time we did get asked my partner was ready to walk out. Once the service started though it was quite good and the waitress we had was quite nice.

Very loud even for a quaint restaurant like this, didn't help with the very loud woman on the table next to us. Having a quiet conversation was definitely out of the question. Obviously this was not the restaurants fault and other than this annoyance the ambience of the place is quite nice.

Nice food but the service needs work, and as from my previous reviews this is a big thing for me. Hopefully they can improve as other than the service, i liked the place.

I really enjoyed reading the Essex menu as inspiration for my own home-cooking and it was definitely hard to decide what to order. plenty of great options, good to see lots of entrees, so you can order 2 of those if you're not a huge eater but want to experiment as much as possible!
the salmon entree, with israeli couscous was spectacular! came with 2 beautiful sauces, one was like a beurre blanc, the other a kind of capsicum paste?

i ordered the bouillabaisse as a main, which was generous and had a great traditional saffron rouille accompaniment but the soup had way too much of an aniseed flavour which i wasn't expecting. my partner's beef with scallops was lovely, and i wish we had ordered dessert as it looked great!

friendly and reasonably efficient (they forgot our bread initially but no big deal). we were worried they wouldn't let us in as we were wearing thongs, but they simply put us in the back corner, hidden from view!

it was freezing cold! i think they went a bit OTT with the aircon so be sure to take a jacket. it's elegant, i like the old-house feel, with different dining rooms, but it could do with some candles!

I would definitely recommend a visit for a special occasion, though i probably won't be back for a while, only because it's fairly pricey (i think mains are close to $40) and there are so many other wonderful places to try!

The entrees were nice, the cocktails were lovely but the Seafood Platter for 2 was extremely disappointing given the gold plate awards up in the reception and the advertisement out the front claiming that they have the best seafood in Freo.
The first course of the platter was ok, the oysters were nice but the garlic prawns had no flavour and appeared boiled.
The second course of the platter was appalling with Salad and chips taking up three quarters of the plate, the mussels were tiny and had a bitter aftertaste. The fish was dry and had no flavour and the sauce for the crabs and mussels was like Heinz canned tomato soup. Very Disappointing....

Although our concerns for the seafood platter were raised our concerns were not addressed and the person taking our money completely avoided the issue. This avoidance is well reflected in the lack of patrons dining within the restaurant.

Lack of ambience was noticeable.

Extremely disappointing given the poor quality of food.

A group of 4 of us had 2 x Seafood Platter sfor 2 people, and it was SUPERB. It included a entree serving and then a mains, and everyone was absolutely raving about it.

Service was excellent, we had some people drop out of the booking at the last minute, and the FOH manager was great about changing our table arrangement. The young waiter we had was great, didnt mind going and asking chef about some items due to one person bit able to eat gluten products.

Mood lighting was lovely, decor really nice and everyone in the restaurant was smiling.

Thoroughly enjoyed our dinner at Essex, and will happily go back there again & recommend to others.

Been here several times in the past and I this latest visit will be our last. This place has certainly taken a slide! The place absolutely reeked of burnt fat and when we complained and asked for another table we were snapped at by some old dragon of a waitress.The food was so, so.....had scallops but, these were over powered by the shitake mushrooms and the salmon gnocchi was ordinary. The service was appalling, grumpy inattentive waitresses with extremely bad attitudes....struggling for staff perhaps? The kitchen certainly needs a good clean as does the whole tired restaurant.

We love this place and have been well pleased every time we have dined there. I have to say that the decor was a little surprising but it is genuine and warm. The food is great but I don’t recommend the steaks, we have had them on two separate occasions and they have not been up to their usual standard. You have to have the calamari with strawberry chilli jam it is spectacular. I had the Balmain Bug ravioli on our last trip and it was fabulous. The desserts are pure heaven we have tried and recommend them all. We felt a bit ignored service wise on our last visit, glass of wine never eventuated, had to ask for water to be refilled, nothing major and it certainly didn’t dampen our culinary experience. A menu change would be my only suggestion. Love Essex will be back and back and back...