The Henley Brook Restaurant – Henley Brook (affectionately known as “The Hen”) is located on West Swan Road in the Swan Valley. The family friendly pub and restaurant is great and the perfect place for a relaxed family meal – there’s delicious food, a good atmosphere and so much space for the kids to roam and be free.
The Hen has a choice of indoor and outdoor dining, as well as comfortable sofas, bar stools and tables on the veranda or picnic rugs on the grass in warmer weather. If you’d like to sit inside, I recommend making a reservation in advance because these tables go quickly.
The Henley Brook Restaurant
We had a delicious lunch on a winter day. It’s a great place to enjoy a glass of red by the roaring fire!
The Swan Valley Retreat, Henley Brook
There are tons of country charm at The Hen with exposed brick, beams and lots of retro farmhouse touches. The cozy bar offers local craft beers on tap, as well as wines and ciders. They even make good coffee.
The menu includes bar salads, burgers, parmas, shared food and much more. At the back is the handle of the wooden pizza oven. And Chef wanted to bypass the kids’ menu to take advantage of Thursday’s “Half Price Pizzas” special. The meaty “hunter” pizza ($23) was topped with beef tenderloin, hot peppers, pork belly, caramelized onions, roasted peppers and BBQ sauce. I didn’t mind that he got an adult pizza because half the price was about the same as a kid’s meal and he shared a few slices with us!
I loved the tender slow cooked pork belly. The belly meat with crispy slits was juicy and delicious. Underneath it was creamy mash, fresh green beans and gravy.
My mum enjoyed barramundi fillet with spiced cauliflower rice, sumachdukah, artichokes, roast pumpkin and baba ghanoush.
The Mallard Duck, Henley Brook
Outside, shaded by large gum trees, there is plenty of space for children to roam and explore.
There is a play kitchen, logs to climb, wigwams to make bushes, big tires, ropes to swing and more.
There are balls and goals in the ball game – we even noticed a game of Frisbee going on.
We all really enjoyed lunch at The Hen, which is open seven days a week for lunch and also some evenings for dinner. The staff is really friendly, engaging and made us feel welcome. Not our first visit to The Hen and it certainly won’t be our last!
A Quick Lunch At The Henley Brook, Swan Valley
Amanda Carlin has her own food and travel blog. Founded in 2013, “The Chef, His Wife and their Perth-fect Life” enjoyed an exciting name change in 2021 while “The Chef’s Ex-wife” embarks on new adventures with Simply PERTHfect. Amanda loves being in Perth and WA, as well as brunching, tapas or something a little fancy in equal measure. With her “little chef” son, Amanda always has plenty of family dining options to recommend! Be sure to check out Simply PERTHfect.
Hello, he is not here at the moment. However, you can send an email and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Have a nice day! Teamby Dave | May 17, 2016 | Lifestyle, MADCAT photo, news, our trip, photo tours | 2 comments
While visiting the Mash Brewery for lunch a few weeks ago, we came across a new pub in the Swan Valley right next to the Duckstein (gotta go there again soon) called “The Henley Brook” (a.k.a. “The Hen”).
This is our photographic tour of ‘The Henley Brook’, in which we hope to give you a visual guide to our visit, together with short notes describing our personal experiences at this exciting new location.
Funk 2.0 , Henley Brook
“The Hen”, as it is affectionately known, is set in a large site on West Swan Road with lots of open grassy areas for families with children, plenty of parking and a humorous “Hen” theme that is used extensively throughout the site.
We always love a good story with a bit of history and The Hen certainly delivers on both. The Hen’s story concerns the original settlers who owned the property, the Edwards family.
The original Edwards family still exist at the rear of the property and is now heritage listed. It was built in 1849 by Richard Edwards and his sons, one of the first families to settle in the Swan River Colony.
A great story behind the venue can’t be beat, for us it adds an emotional connection and shows that the owners care about more than just money 🙂 Check out The Henley Brook website and read their story.
Henley Brook Western Australia. Henley Brook Photos By Mingor
The pub itself is beautifully rustic inside and out with a fire in the centre, which adds to the traditional ‘local pub’ friendly atmosphere that we Poms remember so fondly from the ‘good old’ days before we moved here to paradise?
There is plenty of seating without feeling cramped in a chicken coop (do you mean that?) and along one wall is a traditional style bar.
There is also a comfortable seating area where you can relax if you have been running around like a headless chicken all day, with a great view of the extensive grounds provided by the large windows around the building.
The outdoor seating area is also spacious and rustic, and is located near a large area where the chickens (and children) can play.
The Brook Bar & Bistro
Moving on to the more important aspect of any pub, it is the selection of beers, or more importantly, the selection of craft beers!
Although not a brewery itself, The Hen includes the largest range of local craft beers I’ve seen in any pub in Perth.
As you can see on the chalk board behind the bar, they have embraced local Craft Beer in a big way and include beers from many popular local breweries including Little Creatures, Mash, Colonial, Feral,  Nail & Last Drop.
The Hen has not only embraced local craft beers, but they also offer a variety of bottled craft beers from around the world.
Chesters Restaurant, Henley Brook, Perth
It will take a while, but we will have to work our way through all the craft beers. By the end we may have even learned something about beer tasting above the beginner level we are now, I’m pretty sure I can already tell a Pils from a Pale Ale!
To start our Craft Beer Tour at The Hen we both tried something new for us. Maggie went with the Last Drop Pils, which she really enjoyed. Ironically we hadn’t heard of Last Drop Brewery before (despite being the oldest operating brewery in WA!!) so it was a pleasant surprise to discover a new local brewery.
To Maggie’s dismay, I chose the Nail Stout when she tasted it and then tried to steal it! It was beautifully smooth and delicious (insert expert beer tasting comments here) and definitely one of the best Stouts I’ve ever tasted!
Of course, lunch can’t be all about beer, and there were plenty of delicious dishes on the menu.
The Henley Brook, Swan Valley
As often we chose smaller plates to avoid overeating and to get some variety.
First I chose the Chilli Salt Squid with lychee salad, pickled radish and lime aioli. The mix of flavors was a delight and the addition of the lychee made it a wonderful dish.
Maggie chose the Texas Hickory BBQ Lamb Ribs and it turned out to be the gooey, messy, delicious and indulgent dish that BBQ ribs should always be.
For our third course, we went with the Lemon Prawn Balls Arancini with red chilli and basil coulis and garlic confit. This meal was a disaster! Well, when I say disaster, it was really tasty and we loved it, but there wasn’t enough of that wonderful garlic jam! Someone tell the chef to triple the garlic next time!
Black Swan Winery & Restaurant
One thing you’ll probably notice when you look around The Hen is all chickens! They are everywhere and I’m pretty sure this one with our table number on the back had to be watching our ribs…
I know normal chickens don’t eat meat but those ribs were very tasty and who knows what a metal chicken will eat when it gets a little grumpy!!!
The great thing about being a photographer is that you are always looking for unusual subjects to photograph. Apparently, this habit of taking pictures of almost everything in sight can be a little annoying to the non-photographers you hang out with 😮
I called this “The Eye of the Hen”, who knows, maybe someone will write a song about it 🙂
Duckstein Brewery, Henley Brook, Perth
We were all ready to leave when this guy asked us as we passed his table, “Are you geeks?”.
Note that, completely sure what he meant, we started talking to him (Maggie is talking while I’m taking pictures <
>) which resulted in us not leaving for another 30 minutes before we had a great chat with John the Local from Ellenbrook.
It turns out that John the Local really appreciates his beer, so we had a lot in common from the start.
Swan Valley: Fresh Produce & Fresh Air
It also turned out that John knew some of the employees very well and introduced them
