The City is a foodie’s playground, with upmarket fine dining at places like Patina at Customs House, Chinese beauty Madame Wu and Tillerman. Meanwhile, Moo Moo serves locally-sourced meat at a restaurant in the heritage-listed former Embassy Chambers.
Brisbane’s locals love dishes like sand crab lasagne and black garlic bread, Moreton Bay bug curry and Aussie Asian eggs. Or try bar-restaurant Alchemy, where a duck ragu pappardelle is a highlight. Here are some of the best restaurants in Brisbane city that act as foodie heaven.
- Black Hide by Gambaro
Four years since Gambaro Group brought Black Hide to Caxton Street in Petrie Terrace, they’ve added a second Brisbane outpost to the Treasury building. Black Hide at Treasury Brisbane evokes refined opulence with a space filled with refurbished rooms that work to engage the senses – the Hide Room evoking touch, the Carving Room and Butchers Room addressing taste and smell, and the Parlour Room and Black Label Room engaging sight and sound.
The menu helmed by ex-Rockpool chef Lukas McEwan, features an array of steak cuts sourced from family-owned and integrated beef and cattle company Stanbroke. There’s also a selection of seafood including fresh-shucked or Kilpatrick oysters, grilled Hervey Bay scallops, fried squid, and bacon-wrapped spanner crab and sweetcorn tortellini.
As well as a fantastic meat cabinet, Black Hide is also home to a great wine list featuring choice drops from across Australia and beyond. Complement your meal with a drink at the bar and make sure to leave room for dessert, which includes coconut parfait with pineapple salsa and mint granita.
- Bisou Bisou
When Hotel X opened in Fortitude Valley, it brought a new French restaurant to town. Bisou Bisou is the feature dining destination, with a caviar bar, freestanding rotisserie and cheese trolley also part of the mix. It’s run by Ghanem Group (Blackbird Bar and Grill, Boom Boom Room Izakaya) and backed by a menu from head chef Anthony Donaldson.
The interior – by AZB Creative – is an elegant ode to casual Parisian diners. Perch at the aperitivo bar, flanked by luxe red bar chairs, or settle into the main space with its marble tables and white-washed brick feature wall.
The kitchen serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the menu features remixed Gallic standards. Think bouillabaisse starring Queensland seafood; cod beignets with saffron mayonnaise; and escargot with bone marrow on toast. There’s also the usual suspects like croque monsieur, steak tartare and a rotating selection of sorbets.
- Same Same
After five years of serving Brisbane elevated Thai fusion, Tyron Simon pulled up stumps from LONgTIME to transform the rustic Ann Street space into a function venue. Fortunately, the chef took with him the reputation and the food, opening Same Same in Ada Lane across from boutique hotel The Calile.
The space feels more than just a restaurant: it's half bar, half cellar. That means an extensive list of fun and refreshing natural wines, with a heavy focus on rhones and rieslings. This is the place to power through a bottle of unfiltered Slovenian while powering through your spicy-as-hell papaya salad.
Same Same's menu features a mix of familiar dishes and a few standouts. LaBan calls out the herb-blasted chicken and cabbage salad as "addicting" and the banh mi fillings "all admirable." The kitchen also turns out a few tasty panna cotta desserts. Most diners say the staff are friendly and service is fast.
- Detour
If you want a sexy, sly little hard-boiled thriller with plenty of action and even a bit of romance, Detour is for you. Long unavailable in a format that could do it justice, this marvelously entertaining movie finally gets a proper DVD release.
The DVD includes a 21-minute interview with Ulmer that covers his early years as well as his struggles to get this film made. There is also an 11-minute interview with the director of the Film Academy Archive and a discussion of how they went about finding viable prints.
Law student Harper finds out his mother is in a terminal coma and decides to take revenge on his cruel stepfather by contracting hoodlum Johnny Ray and prostitute Cherry to kill him. They deliver, but complications ensue.
