The heat is on to find WA’s best steak sandwich, and local eateries are more than pulling their weight, with all four finalists in this year’s competition hailing from south of the river.
More than a decade into the search for WA’s best steak sanga, the 15th annual AHA & Furphy WA’s Best Steak Sandwich Competition will host its final cook-off in front of a live audience at the Australian Hotel’s Association Expo at Crown Perth on Wednesday, June 29.
Keeping it simple in the hopes of beating out the competition, Seven Sins Head Chef Seb Sindermann is looking to better last year’s effort.
“We were a finalist last year and we went in sort of as a bit of fun but ended up being finalists in the cook off.
“The recipe hasn’t changed since then, I’m very happy with it and we’ve kept it exactly the same, it was close to winning last year and we’ll see what we can do this year,” he said.
Sindermann, who was crowned WA’s best head chef for 2021 at the Hospitality Awards for Excellence, said the secret is in the sauce.
“The key to a good steak sandwich: good quality meat – we use the finest beef fillet – you want to have something you can hold in one hand and bite into and it doesn’t make a mess. And good sauces.
“We pride ourselves in making all the sauces in-house. They are all dairy-free so you can take the cheese off it and make it a dairy-free option,” he said.
The offering coming out of his family-run restaurant’s kitchen is the Seven Sins Fillet Steak Sandwich with bacon, topped with Swiss cheese, onion jam, lettuce and tomato chutney, served with fries.
“We sell about 120 a week, especially now it’s in the running, people are traveling from everywhere and sometimes we get a table of six who just order that, it’s quite exciting,” Sindermann said.
“We have a local supplier who does all our meat and seafoods, he sources all of his stuff from WA, primarily all of our produce is from inside WA.”
Looking ahead to next Wednesday’s competition, where he will be facing off against The Karalee on Preston (Como), former winning chef Matt Still at The Byford Tavern and former winning chef Mickey Phull at The Last Local (Canning Vale), Sindermann said it was great to see local restaurants in the finals.
“The chef at The Byford Tavern won it last year – it’s very tough competition this year.
“It’s interesting, the top four including us are from south of the river and that’s really nice for our neck of the woods.
“Especially being in the hills, it’s very exciting that people are making the journey and it’s nice to know people are seeing what we’re doing and appreciating it.
“I want to thank my team and the community – the community has been a huge support, if you work with the locals you’ll be recognised, that’s where it starts.
“I grew up here so it’s very heart-warming for me to have everyone on board.”
