Archive for 29/12/2008

nick | 29/12/2008
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Coco’s Cafe Review

A few years ago I remember eating breakfast at a cafe in West End and getting bacon, eggs and coffee for under $10. More recently I’ve resigned myself to having to pay $15 or $20 for a good breakfast at a cafe and assumed that inflation had killed the ‘value’ I once experienced.

I was wrong. You just have to go further to find it. Coco’s at Currimundi on the Sunshine Coast keeps the dream alive with a buy-one-get-one-free special that is reeling them in. $8 will get you two plates of fried eggs, bacon, toast and blanched tomato in a casual lakeside cafe setting.

On the Sunday morning that we were there the place was full to overflowing so much so that we had to ask for an additional table to be set up for us which the staff handled without a problem. We expected to be in for a decent wait due to the crowd but our capaccino ($2.80) and iced coffee ($3.50 made with espresso!) appeared inside 5 minutes and our meals were not far behind.

The food was cooked well and the serving plentiful with the eggs delivered sunny side up. I didn’t see any eggs cooked differently so I’m not sure whether they are flexible on this point, but it certainly wasn’t doing Coco’s any harm.

Amusingly there is another cafe positioned opposite Coco’s that offers similar fare with out the 2-4-1 special. There were no more than 6 people inside which for a Sunday morning a week before Christmas must be surely be ringing alarm bells.

Coco’s gets a Highly Recommended for quick clean service, decent food and amazing value.

Coco’s Beach Cafe

Cnr Westaway Parade & Watson Street
Currimundi map
07 5493 4173

Visited on Sunday, 21 December 2008

Category: BEYOND BRISBANE, CAFE |
nick | 25/12/2008
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Au Cirque Review

I found out recently that a friend of mine has been searching for Brisbane’s best breakfast café / restaurant and after 6 months of exhaustive testing he has reached a decision. His decision to put Au Cirque at the top of the pile seems to be shared by a few other people and I felt it was high time I checked the cafe out.

Au Cirque is on Brunswick St and sits in the trendy suburb of New Farm. On a Saturday morning it would be ideal for people watching if of course you can get in, but more about that later.

The atmosphere is very relaxed and casual and when we walked in on a recent Thursday morning the place had only a dozen or so customers. 8 am on a weekday is a peculiar time for breakfast at a café as all the people who are chained to a desk from 9am will be finishing up and heading to the office while all those that can sleep in will still be doing so.

We chose a seat at the upstairs window bar which looks down on Brunswick Street and ordered some caffeine to start the day. The flat white and English breakfast tea were speedily delivered and it’s perhaps at this point that I should explain what makes this place so popular. Their menu is good. Very good. They’ve got the pides and fried mushies on sourdough and gluten free stuff and pancakes and omelets and French toast and the Chow Down (read: hangover cure) so your sure to find something you like, it’s very much a step away from the bacon and eggs on toast theme. We settled on field mushrooms, baby spinach and feta on sourdough with a side of bacon ($10.50+$3.5) and a Chow Down ($16). For a place as well regarded as Cirque it may come as a surprise that they do not take kindly to requests for menu alterations. If the menu says poached eggs, you cannot have them scrambled. As long as your tastes match that of the menu you won’t have a problem.

Inside the furnishings are simple and somewhat rustic. It’s all long kitchen tables and stools so on a busy day you might find yourself sharing a table with other customers. This is part of the style and appeal of Cirque – they have made their little nook into a shared home for the breakfast goers of New Farm.

Our meals arrived in good time and killed the conversation – a reflection on how good they were. My fried mushrooms, baby spinach and feta on sourdough was excellent with the feta really taking the dish beyond what I’d expected. I found myself savouring each mouthful which rarely happens. My companion’s Chow Down (poached eggs, bacon, fried potato hash, mushies and blanched tomato) received a nod of approval and it’s hard to imagine anyone not being satisfied by it. Cirque also does a vegetarian version of the Chow Down should you be that way inclined.

Cirque has a lot going for it and has a line out the door on the weekend with up to an hour wait (no reservations). The food is excellent and as long as your expectations match the style and character of the place you’ll be in for a good start to your morning.

Au Cirque

618 Brunswick Street
New Farm map
07 3254 0479

BYO Wine and Beer only
UPDATE: Au Cirque is now fully licensed (14/4/09)

Visited on Thursday, 18 December 2008

Category: CAFE, INNER CITY |
nick | 21/12/2008
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Map Magazine’s Eat Drink Awards 2008 / 2009

Map magazine has just announced its best places to Eat and Drink in Brisbane for 2008 / 2009 as voted for by its readers.

Some of my favourite places made the list with Verve Cafe on Edward St winning both “Best Cafe” and “Best Place for Lunch” and The Gunshop cafe in West End winning “Best Place for Breakfast”.

Other establishments that have done well are Urban Grind in New Farm which picked up the awards for “Best New Cafe” and “Best Place for Coffee”, Limes Hotel Rooftop Bar in Fortitude Valley for “Best New Bar” and “Best Bar” and Montrachet restaurant in Paddington grabbing “Best Place for Dinner” and “Best Romeo and Juliet Restaurant”.

Anyway the full list can be found here so if you’re after somewhere new to take a date there is certainly some inspiration in the list and a lot of places I’ve not tried.

Map magazine is a free monthly lifestyle magazine that you find around train stations and in the doorways of music stores, pubs and clubs and some clothes stores. Its target readership is 25-34 year old inner city dwellers and creative professionals.

Category: SPOTLIGHT |
nick | 17/12/2008
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The Lure Restaurant Review

There is one restaurant in Brisbane that I’ve eager to visit since it opened in 2005. The Lure restaurant at The Coro Hotel in Milton has a reputation (and the awards to back it up) for Brisbane’s best seafood and until last week I hadn’t had an opportunity, or the budget to see if their reputation holds true.

To give you the short version: It’s as good as everyone says it is.

Three years isn’t particularly long in the restaurant industry, but Lure has already managed to establish itself at the top of the food chain. They’ve won Queensland’s Best Seafood Restaurant 3 times in 3 years as well as Best Informal Dining and Best New Restaurant. So when I received an invitation for lunch on someone else’s tab there was simply no way I was going to miss out.

Lure restaurant is located upstairs at the swank establishment known as The Coro in Milton. The building and the fittings have won almost as many awards as the food but considering the quality of the food and the prices being charged I feel the restaurant area needs a dash more elegance and polish. The décor and settings are minimal which may work for a lot of places in Brisbane that have views but there’s nothing to see at Lure and as such I think they need to do more with the interior design to bring it into line with the quality of everything else they do.

If you’re into seafood, the menu is as good as gets. We started with an Entrée Tasting Plate ($29 for one / $44 to share) which had oysters natural and Rockefeller, mixed sashimi, spiced scallops and soft shell crab.

The entrée was delicious with the soft shell crab and scallops a particular standout. The oysters were Sydney Rock Oysters sourced from Stradbroke Island and tasted particularly fresh.

We moved on to mains and ordered Grilled Cone Bay Barramundi and soft shell crab ($38), Tasmanian Ocean Trout on scallop and spinach risotto ($34) and a whole baked snapper ($36~). If you happen to be dining with someone who’s not a huge fan of seafood, Lure also has options including duck breast with tempura bok choy ($37) and several cuts of Black Angus steak ($35/$39) and grilled haloumi ($27) as a lone vegetarian dish.

I must mention that our mains took quite a while to arrive which was not a problem as we had no time constraints and were enjoying each others company and conversation but if you had popped in for a quick business lunch then this may have been an issue.

The service had me worried initially; a waiter asked if he could ‘borrow’ our menus briefly as not all of our table had arrived as they had apparently ‘run out’ of menus and another table needed them. I’ve never had that happen before… We also had a drinks order go missing and had to re-order. When the order did arrive the waitress managed to spill the top of a beer. Not a good start for any restaurant. The service recovered though and during our meal they managed to top up our wine glasses and clear our plates while remaining almost invisible which was much more inline with our expectations.

My Tasmanian Ocean Trout was the best trout I’ve had. The fillet was quite large, perfectly cooked with the skin crisp and the flesh moist. The scallop and spinach risotto was an excellent compliment with half a dozen scallops for me to devour. I’d definitely order this again. There was nothing but praise from my companions for their meals and the whole baked snapper was an impressive dish, particularly as the waitress offered to remove the spine and bones at the half way point, a feat that made us forget about the earlier service shortcomings.

We also had a side of hand cut chips with aioli and chilli jam ($7) and mixed vegetables ($8) which we didn’t manage to finish. In retrospect I don’t think we really needed them.

Lure restaurant does some seriously good seafood and I hope it doesn’t take me another 3 years to get back there. It’s a really good option for something a bit fancy if you don’t want to head into the CBD and is definitely worth looking into if you’re a fan of fish.

Highly Recommended.

The Lure Restaurant

The Coro
28 McDougall Street
Milton map
07 3369 9955

Fully licenced

www.thecoro.com/LureRest.htm

Visited on Thursday, 11 December 2008
Lure

Category: RESTAURANT, WESTERN SUBURBS |
nick | 15/12/2008
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Pineapple Hotel Steakhouse Review

One of the big trends in the hotel industry in Brisbane has been to spruce up a pub by adding on a steak restaurant. The reason is obvious; to attract a wider range of patrons and generate some extra revenue. It’s easy to see how this would work from the pub’s perspective as many people will happily spend $30 on a main but would never order 5 pints of beer ($30~) in the course of an evening.

It’s a model that has been proved and now everyone wants in. There’s the Breakfast Creek Hotel, The Regatta Hotel, The Norman Hotel, The Caxton Hotel and there’s The Pineapple Hotel’s Steakhouse which is where I spent a recent Thursday evening.

The curious thing about these restaurants is that each claim to be “THE BEST” in something, whether it is Brisbane or Queensland or just straight out world famous (Brekky Creek Hotel). The Pineapple Hotel is no different and has won 6 awards for its Steakhouse dining, all of which are proudly displayed in the restaurant.

The reason I bring all this up is that this market has become so saturated that there are at least a dozen options for a decent steak in Brisbane and you’re almost guaranteed to be eating something that has won an award at some point. From the diner’s perspective this is definitely a good thing as it breeds competition and should help to ensure quality as it’s no hassle to pick a different restaurant next time. A restaurant has to be always on top of what they’re doing if they are to keep customers when their product is easily substituted.

Unfortunately for the Pineapple Hotel’s Steakhouse, this is exactly what I’ll be doing next time I’m after a steak with my friends. It’s not that any one thing was particularly bad but they must have been doing something different in the past to be classified as award winning.

Aesthetically, the Steakhouse is separated from the other areas of the hotel and looks to seat about 150 people at capacity. It’s a large open room with TVs placed strategically showing a variety of sports incase your dining company isn’t holding your attention.

Our party of six strolled in a little after 8pm and we were immediately seated without a booking. There were half a dozen other groups of diners with a definite trend towards the 40+ age group.

chickenI was the only one at our table not to order steak and settled on chicken breast pocketed with brie, spinach and toasted pinenuts ($25). We also had several MSA Eye Fillets (200g $29 / 300g $36), an Angus Rump (400g $30) and a couple of 1824 Rib Fillets (200g $25 / 350g $32) all being served with a choice of sauce, baked Idaho potato and vegetables or chips and salad. For those that haven’t dined at this style of restaurant before, one of the key components of the experience is the ‘meat display case’ from which you can view your cut of steak prior to ordering. If steak and chicken aren’t what you’re looking for the Steakhouse also has a couple of seafood dishes as well as a rack of lamb ($28) to tempt your fancy.

We also enjoyed a bottle of 2005 Grant Burge Hillcott Merlot ($33) from the Barossa which was the selection of one of my fellow diners and a wine that I have not tried before. The wine does give me an opportunity to commend the Steakhouse on one aspect of their service; my friend who chose the wine asked for the bar staff to assist her and they allowed her to sample several different varieties from the menu to help her make a decision prior to purchasing a bottle. I certainly did not expect them to be so helpful and it was great to see the staff go out of their way to make her purchase a good one. On the wine itself, it’s quite a fruity, medium bodied red that I think would go well with antipasto but I probably wouldn’t order it again for myself.

Once we’d got the drinks sorted our meals were served quite quickly but perhaps the chef should have taken a little more time…

My chicken breast was covered in a thick tomato based relish which was not mentioned on the menu and meant that it was impossible to taste the brie or spinach which was the main reason I’d ordered it. The chicken itself was evenly cooked and pretty good once I’d scraped off the relish but unfortunately the tomato flavour stayed. Additionally, my Idaho baked potato was not cooked all the way through, which when you consider how easy it is to cook a potato and how many of them the kitchen must turn out was very disappointing.

steakIf my chicken had been the only thing that wasn’t up to scratch then perhaps I would be more willing to give the Steakhouse a second chance but a number of the steaks were not cooked consistently either. We were served a medium-well rib fillet that was quite rare in places, which an award winning restaurant should not be doing. I sampled some of my partner’s eye fillet and we agreed that while it was tasty, it just didn’t seem as ‘fresh’ or as juicy as we’ve had in recent times which is important when you’re paying $30 for a steak.

The food wasn’t the only aspect of the Steakhouse restaurant that let me down. The kitchen closed at about 9pm and from then on the staff were carrying bags of rubbish out from the kitchen, through the restaurant area to outside. Something I believe should be done only once every patron has left if you don’t have a back door.

At the end of the meal we were all certainly well fed but I was dissatisfied by the restaurant. The bottom line is the food is ok, the service and presentation has room for improvement and it wouldn’t win any award I was giving out and with so many options for a steak in Brisbane I’ll be going elsewhere.

The Pineapple Hotel Steakhouse
Brisbane’s premier Steak restaurant

706 Main Street
Kangaroo Point map
07 3393 1111

Fully licenced

http://www.pineapplehotel.com.au/

Visited on Thursday, 4 December 2008
Pineapple Hotel Steakhouse

Category: INNER CITY, RESTAURANT |
nick | 08/12/2008
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Pizza Lounge 595

Pizza Lounge 595 is my local gourmet pizzeria. Its got 20 or so pizzas on the menu with many of them quite different to what I’ve seen at other speciality pizza places. Pizza Lounge 595 also sets itself apart by creating an atmosphere that you’d expect to find in West End or Fortitude Valley; chilled out, casual and very under 40s. Not what you expect to find in Corinda.

But are they any good?

The simple answer is yes, but as always there’s qualifiers. If you don’t like sitting on a lounge in a restaurant you will not like it. If you don’t like dining to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, you will not like it. If the idea of putting pumpkin and almond on a pizza (Number 35, $15.90) sounds plain wrong then you’d best stay away.

We strolled in after 8pm on a Sunday, a time by which everywhere except Domino’s has stopped serving and ordered a large Number 40. Carlos Choice – mild salami, roasted peppers, roasted eggplant, Kalamata olives, semi dried tomatoes, fresh spinach and feta cheese ($16.90), which the guy at the counter recommended as being particularly good.

Pizza Lounge 595 also serve a good selection of pasta and sauce combinations including Pollo e funghi (chicken and mushrooms, $13.50), Calabrese (mild salami, capsicum and Kalamata olives, $13.50) and Oceanic Pan (baby Octopus, prawns, scallops and garlic in a Napoli sauce, $15.50) all with your choice of either fettucini, spaghetti, gnocci and 2 types of ravioli.

If pasta doesn’t grab you they’ve got salads and breads covered aswell. The salami calzone (salami, mushrooms, feta and pesto, $9.90) sounded particularly good.

Our pizza arrived promptly and it was cooked evenly with a crispy base and sprinkled with uncooked baby spinach leaves – not quite how I’d pictured it I’ll admit. The stand out ingredients were definately the Kalamata olivies which were delicious and semi dried tomatoes – a combination which is particularly effective in getting my tastebuds going.

Pizza Lounge 595 gives you a lot of scope to stray off the beaten trail, they have a Garden Pollo (Number 44, $17.90) which features marinated chicken and avocado and a Salmon (Number 41, $17.90) which I’ll be trying next time with salmon, spanish onion, baby capers and shallots.

Pizza Lounge 595 also has gluten free pizza bases and pasta avaliable and are BYO with free corkage.

Check ‘em out if you’re in the area.

Pizza Lounge 595
Gourmet pizza and pasta cafe restaurant

595 Oxley Rd
Corinda map
07 3716 0333

BYO w/ free corkage

Visited on Sunday, 7 December 2008

Category: CAFE, SOUTH SIDE, TAKE-AWAY |
nick | 07/12/2008
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Addiction

I normally make a rule of avoiding restaurants located in Shopping Centres, they’re usually bland and cater to the trapped audience of late night shoppers and movie goers. So it was with reluctance that I recently found myself suggesting dinner at Garden City’s Town Square.

My initial idea was to try Dicey Reilly’s, an Irish themed restaurant, however on closer inspection this seemed like a particularly poor one. The menus (laminated cardboard) were worn, the table battle scarred and the couch we had chosen to sit on looked like it had well and truly started to decompose. Rather than risk necrosis we checked out a couple of other places in the complex and settled on addiction (lower-case ‘a’), an Asian restaurant / cafe.

addiction is a ‘catch all’ Asian restaurant that serves all the old favourites like lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork and sizzling beef and adds in a decent selection of Thai and Malay choices. They also do lunchtime Yum Cha. It turns out there is several of them in Brisbane with locations at Chermside, Loganholme and Upper Mt Gravatt.

The menu is bright and colourful with plenty of pictures to explain the difference between Masaman and Jasmine curries and goes from the basics of Honey Sesame Chicken ($15.90) through to the more interesting Moreton Bay Bugs with Thai sweet chilli sauce ($29.90). addiction also offers a create-your-own noodle bar and noodle soup.

addiction’s trump card, and the reason we pulled up a stool is their Wednesday night 1/2 price main meals. This special proved to be quite a crowd pleaser as addiction was definitely the busiest restaurant in the complex.

We walked in at about 7:30pm and loitered at what appeared to be the front desk area for a few minutes. We weren’t greeted and decided to just pull up a seat at a vacant table as perhaps it wasn’t the kind of place to lead you to a table. Either way we must have got something wrong as it took a long time to get the attention of a waiter and some menus, even though they didn’t appear to be especially busy. Once we’d been given menus service picked up and our waiter was keen to take our orders.

addiction’s menu is quite extensive for a shopping centre restaurant and as we hadn’t yet had a chance to read it properly we ordered drinks to buy ourselves some more time. I like ice coffee and tend to order it whenever it is available and addiction has two varieties according to their menu; stock standard iced coffee ($4.80) or a ‘coffee addiction’ ($4.90). The menu didn’t offer much information as to what separated the two so I asked and was told the coffee addiction comes in a bigger glass and has all the trimmings. We ordered a coffee addiction, a normal iced coffee and a lemon lime and bitters ($3.90).

Our drinks were served promptly however we couldn’t tell the difference between the two iced coffees and had to ask which was which as they were both served in identical soft drink style glasses. I asked why the coffee addiction wasn’t in a larger glass as had been described and the waiter shrugged his shoulders and said “I dunno”.

We ordered our meals, a Nasi Goreng ($10.90 $5.45), Masaman beef curry ($17.90 $8.95) and Moreton Bay bugs with Thai sweet chilli sauce ($29.90 $14.95). We also had an entree of Coconut prawns ($8.90).
the coffee addition is on the left
By this time we had dissected the two iced coffees and the only difference we could find was that the cheaper, standard iced coffee had ice cream in it while the “all the trimmings” coffee addiction didn’t. Neither had been made with actual espresso coffee. We concluded that neither of the iced coffee varieties were particularly good and I felt that for the price they should have been significantly larger. Curiously, one of my dining partners ordered a second ‘standard’ iced coffee and this time it was served in a much larger ‘milk shake’ style glass. This variation over the course of 30mins was disappointing.

Our entree and two of our main meals were delivered promptly however there was an unexplained wait on the Masaman curry and it was served without rice, something our waiter had not prompted us for when ordering.

Moreton Bay bugs with Sweet ChilliThe food was hot, plentiful and very good value at half of the regular price but would have been disappointing at full price. My Moreton Bay bugs (2) were decent sized and served halved so there was no need to crack shells. The Thai sweet chilli sauce was plentiful to the point of being over-powering and made it difficult to evaluate the flavour of the bugs on which it was supposed to complement. A crab fork would have been a welcome addition too, as the regular fork made accessing all the meat quite a challenge. However it’s not every day you get 2 Moreton Bay bugs in a restaurant for $15 and despite the sauce I was still very happy with my meal.

The Nasi Goreng was a huge plate of Malay style fried rice but was unfortunately reported as ‘a bit bland’ while the Masaman curry was (finally) well received with the meat being soft and tender with the potatoes well cooked. We concluded that ‘safe’ Asian style food was the best way to describe our dishes.

addiction has little to no decor or atmosphere to make it memorable which could be viewed as either a positive or negative. The table settings are clean and simple and the single piece wooden chairs quite comfortable for a couple of hours of conversation and dining. The style is definitely that of “easy to clean up afterwards” and tables are arranged in an organised grid fashion. I can’t recall if there was music which could either mean there was none, which is fine or it was done well in so far as to not intrude on dining or conversation.

The bottom line is addiction is a ‘safe’ Asian style restaurant that is very good value for money on a Wednesday night but I feel it would be disappointing at full price.

Addiction
asian restaurant cafe

Town Square, Westfield Garden City
Cnr Kessels and Logan Road
Upper Mt Gravatt map
07 3343 8188

Fully licensed

http://www.addictioncafe.com.au/

Visited on Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Addiction

Category: RESTAURANT, SOUTH SIDE |