An evening with the food, wine, and beer suppliers to Vapiano may have changed my future purchasing habits. The Albert Lane pizza and pasta joint proudly use local, Queensland-based businesses for their vegies, meats, cheeses, olives, and drinks.

Kellie Jensen from Jensens Market Supplies gave an example of just how fresh the produce Vapiano uses is: “These tomatoes were picked this morning, and delivered this afternoon.” Indeed, you can taste a difference when the fruit and vege is fresh, and hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for weeks.

I scoffed cheese and olives from Fino Food and Wine, and loved the fresh and light taste of the ricotta. The milk for these cheeses is sourced directly from the farm. It’s like every time your teeth sink into a fetta cube, you can hear a cow mooing. Very fresh.

I also learned some valuable tips for beer and food matching from Andrew Gowdie, from the James Squire Brewery. Andrew comapred a lager to a white wine, and an ale to a red wine. From there, he recommended something like the James Squire Golden Ale to wash down the pizzas and pastas we chowed down on for dinner.

I’ve had Vapiano’s pizza before, and was pleased to see it was still damn good. I love the crust on these pizzas – to me it is absolutely perfect. I was also delighted to try the white sauce-based pizza, which I fell in love with when I first had it in New York. I’ve found white pizzas few and far between in Australia, so it is awesome that now I know I can get my fix at Vapiano.

To finish on a sweet note, we tried a dessert calzone with chocolate, berries, and some of that fresh ricotta. While I loved this ricotta, I didn’t like it in the calzone. Perhaps because I am a filthy sugar whore and it wasn’t sweet enough.

So it would seem that local and fresh food, that’s in transit for a minimum of time before it hits your plate, is often much better. This will hopefully mark the end to me picking the woody strands of month-old asparagus out of my teeth.

Vapiano

Italian Restaurant and Bar

Albert Lane

Brisbane CBD

(07) 3221 4933

Do you like to eat? Can you write a coherent sentence? Do you vomit when you see people failing to spell ‘definite’ correctly? Do you know the difference between cannoli and cannelloni, but can still appreciate a greasy fast food burger?

I’m always keen for guest reviewers to post on the site. If you’ve got a restaurant/cafe/dodgy takeaway review, or if you’ve got something in mind, email me at eatdrinkbris@gmail.com. If you’ve got cookies, send them on in too.

Review Guidelines
-Reviews must be honest and reflect your true opinion
-Reviews must not be defamatory, or include information that you’re not sure is correct (and you haven’t specified you’re not sure)
-Reviews must be about one particular visit, not a summary of a number of visits.
-Reviews must include at least one relevant photograph.
-Reviews should follow a light, casual style. Weave some personal stuff in there! Have fun with it!
-Reviews should have a minimum of spelling and grammatical errors. I’m not perfect myself, but please do a triple-check before you send it in.
-Reviews should include the establishment’s name; phone number; address; and web address if applicable, at the bottom.
-Reviews should be fairly concise, but should cover food; service; ambiance; and anything else you deem relevant to your experience.
-Reviews must not include any comments that are remotely racist, homophobic, or derogatory against Canadians and/or Nutella.

I am usually happy to review a product, restaurant, cafe, opening, etc. given it is in a reasonably accessible location at a reasonable time.

Please contact me first for any product reviews; if you send me something without discussing the product beforehand, I will definitely still appreciate it, but do not assume I will review it.

In every instance I will always give an honest and fair review.

I will always specify in my review whether the product/visit was complementary.

Contact me (Ally) at eatdrinkbris@gmail.com

One night I was sitting on a curb in the city, chowing down on a kebab, and I got to talking with the dude next to me who was munching on a burger. We talked about how we both liked food and thought Brisbane needed a website dedicated to food reviews. EatDrinkBrisbane was created.

I wish it had happened that way, but unfortunately, this is reality and in reality, my late night snack of choice is Subway. EatDrinkBrisbane was actually created in 2008 by Nick, and I then came on board in May 2009. We have built up a modest but awesome database of food and restaurant reviews from Brisbane and its surrounds.

Nick has since left this life of gluttony, and I now hold the reigns and am keen to build up EatDrinkBrisbane even more. Along with Brisbane restaurant reviews, you’ll also find area profiles, product reviews, and event and festival run downs. We are by no means food and drink experts on EatDrinkBrisbane-these reviews are our own opinions, and are to be taken with a grain of salt. I also blog over at www.desktopmag.com.au

I always welcome love mail, so feel free to use the contact form or email eatdrinkbris@gmail.com if you want to get in touch. No more naked pictures though, please. I have enough.

Nick
AKA: The Creator
“What’s with these raw sugar packets?! I want refined, damnit!”

Hi. I’m Nick. I like eating and the sound of my own voice. So what better way to combine these two things than by starting a food blog! I created Eat Drink Brisbane because I was sick of being stuck for ideas of where to eat. For too long have I rotated the same few restaurants and not had a good answer when one of my friends asks, “What’s good?”

I started this site with the goal of finding the best of the Brisbane food scene and telling people about my discoveries. Somewhere along the line, a girl called Ally started writing as well and I quickly realised she’s much better at it than I am.

My hope is that this site becomes a resource for those dining in Brisbane and a useful guide to find the best things to put in your mouth.

- Nick McIntosh
(As of September 2009, Nick has stopped writing for Eat Drink Brisbane to pursue other projects)