Catching a wave in Australia

Print Hall is one of Perth's most celebrated new restaurants.

The British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver just opened an Italian restaurant in the business district, but the most stylish hangouts, located in alleyways once used for garbage, emphasize urbane grit. They bear names like Bobeche and Toastface Grillah, and devote page after page to elaborate cocktails. Ever since the city created a special liquor license for them in 2005, small bars－usually also peddling small bites－have proliferated; you can spend practically every night in a different bar that, a century ago, was something else: a technical school (Bar Lafayette), a rag factory (1907), a cottage (the Old Crow), a residence and stable (the Stables Bar).

I dined at Print Hall, one of the city's most celebrated new restaurants, set in an old printing press building and featuring soaring ceilings and a bright white atrium. The lower level is a coffee emporium, where you can find coffee roasted in-house, and the main floor is devoted to locally sourced fine dining and live oyster shucking. On the sweeping rooftop bar, ogle the view and sip a Bloody American－a Campari and blood orange concoction－or a New York Bee-Sting, which combines rye, cognac and honey.

The mezzanine, wallpapered in Chinese newspaper, is the Apple Daily Bar and Eating House, serving Hong Kong-style yum cha, or tea and dim sum. There, my glass of sauvignon-semillon and order of steamed scallops with soy rice wine dressing were served by a waitress with piercings and electric-pink lipstick. It seemed as if everyone in Perth was under the age of 30.

Changing hotels allowed me to experience the other face of the new Perth. Fraser Suites, a gleaming, 19-story high-rise with floor-to-ceiling windows, opened in 2012 in the up-and-coming Queens Riverside area. New restaurants and bars are on the way in the neighborhood; there's even a beach being constructed. After settling in my sky-high room, I tackled more neighborhoods, relishing rides on free buses or subways so immaculate they felt like toys.