Five days in Brisbane: Grill’d & Mövenpick, 21 Oct 2009

How we ended up having dinner at Brisbane’s South Bank is a bit of a funny story. We had taken a walk across the Brisbane River on our first afternoon after arriving when we happened to come across a Mövenpick ice-cream parlour. Cue lots of excited bouncing on the spot and wide-eyed hyperventilating on my part. And how stupid did I feel when I discovered that there were two of these babies back home in Sydney at both Bondi Beach and Manly! But because we could not find room in our stomachs to accommodate ice-cream at the time, we made a point of going back across to have dinner one evening so that we could have dessert at Mövenpick afterwards. So the main point was dessert, not dinner, which is absolutely, entirely and completely logical.

We wander the streets of South Bank which are littered with eateries and spend ages browsing menus to consider what sounds good as well as what we feel like. We settle on a burger place called Grill’d which has reasonable prices and cute wall illustrations up the back.

Monsieur Poisson’s attention is immediately captured by the ‘Summer Sunset’ beef burger on the menu as it contains avocado, bacon, salad, relish (unspecified), herbed mayonnaise and the all-important pineapple. My husband loves pineapple on almost anything, and especially pizza. The burgers don’t come with sides so we order a serve of chips with herbed mayonnaise for dipping.

The beef burger has been ordered on a traditional burger bun which is covered in sesame seeds, crisp but not crusty on the outside, and soft on the inside. The meat patty is juicy and the chips are crunchy without being oily. The thick cut chips have fluffy potato centres and are lightly tossed in herbs and salt which are only made herbier by the accompanying herbed mayo.

My choice is the ‘Grill’d Bird & Brie’ which we order on a Panini roll and comes with grilled chicken breast, brie, thick cranberry sauce, salad and more of their herbed mayo. The roll is lightly dusted in flour and doughy, holding a smoky fillet of chicken with very obvious grill marks.

What strikes us is the neatness of these burgers and how evenly placed the components are placed within the buns. We glance across at the open kitchen where there are a group of teenagers each devoted to a different task in assembling orders. We notice the girl who is in charge of spreading on the sauces is doing so in an almost OCD-esque manner, ensuring it is flatly spread all the way to the edges.

We’re quite full of food so we go for a walk around Streets Beach, the man-made swimming beach located just within the banks of Brisbane River. It’s free entry with several large ‘pools’ of differing depths interconnected, flanked by sand and lined with palm trees.

We eventually make our way over to Mövenpick where Monsieur Poisson gets an iced chocolate fix and I have a Belgain waffle. The waffle is made to order and not a reheated one like we expect. As a result, it’s more doughy rather than crusted with crunchy sugary bits but it is incredibly fresh.

Choosing ice-creams to go with the waffle is agonising as there are so many flavours that we want to try! We settle for a scoop of Swiss chocolate and one of hazelnut. In a way I don’t think the flavours matter too much, but rather it's the texture that shines, as they’re both incredibly smooth and creamy. Monsieur Poisson is more than happy with his iced chocolate, standing elegantly in its tall glass with plenty of chocolate chips floating on top.

It actually takes us a while to work through the dessert and drink, and we leisurely do so whilst browsing some in-house magazines. In the meantime, people come and go before we realise it’s high time we should be heading back to the hotel for the night.

Grill’d

167 Grey St (cnr Ernest St), South Bank QLD

Tel: (07) 3844 4700

Opening Hours:  Sun-Thurs  11:30am-10pm

Fri & Sat  11:30am-11pm

Mövenpick

Little Stanley St, South Bank QLD

Tel: (07) 3846 2065

Opening Hours: 7 days  11am-11pm

happy eating!