Value for money comes in many guises.
It's the $6 bowl of Vietnamese pho you wolfed down in a Northbridge cafe with laminated table and no air conditioning.
But it's also the $25 Waroona rabbit bresaola you scoffed at a schmick city fine diner with soft linen napkins and crystalline glassware.
In short, food is not all you pay for when dining out. Ambience costs. So does tableware. And location.
As to staff, the lure of lucrative north-west casual work has put paid to any self-respecting backpacker spending more than five minutes further south as a lowly-paid waiter.
Consequently it's a challenge for restaurateurs to train and keep good people. And guess what. This, too, adds to the cost of that chip butty you're munching on.
All of which brings me to Margaret River, where the likes of Vasse Felix, Clairault, Cullen, Xanadu, Leeuwin and Voyager Estate head up an impressive roll call of iconic cellar doors where lunch, as well as wine, is king.
There is much to enjoy here if a fancypants lunch is on your list of things to do. The Vasse Felix (9756 5000) has a vine-clad dining deck overlooking the region's first commercial vineyard.
Much of produce at Cullen Dining (9755 5656) comes from they winery's biodynamic garden, and some of the outdoor tables are right next to the vines.
At Voyager (9757 6354), the Renaissance kitsch meets Cape Dutch dining room is a chandelier clad wonder filled with plendid floral arrangements.
If it's dinner you're after, you'll luck out at pretty much every winery except Leeuwin Estate (9759 0000). There are some good places in Margaret River itself (Must and the diametrically opposed Arc of Iris, to name two). Out on the winery strip, the finest spot is the restaurant overlooking a pretty lake at Cape Lodge (9755 6311), a member of Luxury Lodges of Australia.
Here, Chef Tony Howells produces food that celebrates the local, capitalises on quality and is delivered to your table by exceptionally well-rehearsed staff.
On a recent visit I ate a fat chunk of moist, flavoursome marron – itself a miracle of careful cooking – wrapped in delicate, silken pasta and served with a browned butter. I loved it so much I almost died.
The only downside is the price ($29 or so for an entree) and the fact that if you're not staying overnight, you'll probably have to book your table several eons in advance.
Fortunately, beyond these top of the wozzer stop-offs lies a cheaper sub-strata of value-for-money dining rooms where the laid-back vibe and food with a strong sense of regional provenance more than make up for the lack of linen napery.
I'm thinking of weekend pizzas at Swings and Roundabouts winery (9756 6735), and the scruffy little open air dining room at the White Elephant (9757 1990) at Gnarabup, where the food is surprisingly classy and diners sit within inches of the beach.
But mostly I'm thinking of the recently-opened McHenry's Farm Shop and cellar door (9757 9684), where chef Sal Davis is producing the same simple, hearty, user-friend fare she cooked back in her days at the Millbrook Winery and, before that, with Maggie Beer in the Barossa.
The point of all this? I'm not really sure. Maybe it's that we all have decisions to make about what we want to spend our dining dollar on, and it's not always just about the food. File under horses for courses.
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