Back to restaurant reviews
94-98 Esplanade, Williamstown, 0409 006 439
My score: 3.5/5
Unless you want waves, Williamstown Beach has it all. Cricket players leap for one-handed catches over shell-flecked sand. Bikini babes roast. Seagulls steal chips. Snorkellers bob at the bluestone breakwater. Nonnas walk arm-in-arm on the promenade. Kids complain about sunscreen. Babies scream in beach tents. Couples keep the flame alive with a cooler bag of oysters and champagne. Container ships creep across the horizon. A showcase of Aussie domestic architecture overlooks the beach road: Victorian fancy work, fibro modesty, ethnic ostentation, gleaming riche. It’s a seaside village in a city of four million people and it’s really nice.
Walking east to west, a rotunda at one end of the beach serves fried food and fluorescent ice cream. Nearby, Shelly’s Beach Pavilion is the fancier option with its all-day menu and beachfront deck. At the western end of the beach, adjoining the swimming pool and cute lifesaver’s turret, is the new Kiosk d’Asporto, an Italian takeaway joint that’s an offshoot of Willy’s well-loved Pizza d’Asporto.
The shutters are up early for good coffee and pastries. I’m yet to find any better excuse for pausing a dog walk than an espresso (or classy Illycrema slushy) and a pastiera napoletana (baked ricotta cake with orange peel). The lunch menu expands with panini, filled perhaps with spring onion frittata or chicken cacciatore. Salads are prepared on site: farro is tossed with nuts, red apple slivers, sultanas and heaps of herbs for healthy post-swim sustenance. Pulled pork, roasted capsicum and cous cous are a good salad combination but my cous cous was wet and lumpy. At the moment, salads are served in plastic tubs and there’s nowhere on hand to recycle them; I’m glad to hear the owners are considering sustainable bamboo instead.
Golden, cheesy arancini in bite-size and just-swam-two-K size emerge from the deep-fryer: they’re delicious. Hot, crisp flake and chips are served in paper cones. Gelati is squished into bread rolls as well as cups and cornets. (Try the tira misu flavour.) There are picnic tables for perching but I only feel like I’m really eating on the beach when I garnish my snacks with sand.
See their website.
More beachy:
West Beach Bathers Pavilion, corner Beaconsfield Parade and Pier Road, St Kilda West, 9593 8833.
Come for eggs, pizza, burgers or scones and eat with your toes in the sand. There’s live music on Sunday afternoons.
Cerberus Beach House, Half Moon Bay, Black Rock, 9533 4028.
Grab fish ‘n’ chips at the kiosk or head upstairs to the restaurant for soft shell crab salad or baked barramundi. Either way, there’s a face full of bay as a bonus.
Milk Bar & Co, 42 Lochiel Ave, Mt Martha, 5974 2757.
You can buy basic supplies here but most people come for coffee, muesli, salads, steak sandwiches and cakes. The beach is just across the road.
First published in The Age, January 10th, 2016.
Leave A Comment