Five days in Brisbane: Byron Bay Cookie Company, 23 Oct 2009

Byron Bay Cookie Company cookies are a common sight in many cafés around the country be it in tall glass jars on the counter or in their distinctive individual packets. Boxes of their bite-sized cookies can be found at David Jones stores as well as more gourmet food outlets. I have never seen them available elsewhere, so imagine my delight when I happened upon their retail store at Brisbane Domestic Airport when I was heading back to Sydney! The helpful salesperson told me it was the only retail store apart from the one located at Byron Bay itself.

I got rather excited and suspect I may have started squealing. Perhaps my husband may have shot me an alarmed and embarrassed sideways glance, but I was too busy admiring the range of products available to have noticed. The store stocks their own brand of cookies in snack packs as well as café packs in clear plastic packaging. On the shelves are also cookies by Luken & May and other brands of non-cookie products. I saw some jars of honey about the place, if I don’t remember wrong.

So I came away with multiple small packets of cookies, as expected, to maximise on the amount of flavours I was able to purchase. They weren’t all for myself, but out of the flavours I did try my favourite was the lemon macadamia shortbread – so lemony from the moment the packet was opened, so buttery and suitably crumbly with bits of macadamia. Apparently this is an award-winning flavour from 2006. It also helped that they were bite-sized and very easy to eat. Or perhaps that could be a bad thing…

Byron Bay Cookie Company

Domestic Terminal, Brisbane Airport, Brisbane QLD

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: Il Centro, 22 Oct 2009

I actually can’t remember how we ended up choosing Il Centro for dinner. Wifey, having lived in Brisbane five years previous, had suggested we try Cha Cha Char also at Eagle Street Pier but for some reason we went with Il Centro instead. We are seated at a table outdoors, taking advantage of the pleasant evening weather, and the menu had sounded quite promising until I studied it again after getting there.

I start the evening with a glass of prosecco. I actually did not intend to drink but I find it very hard to go past a glass of bubbles these days – it just so appeals to the girly girl in me! Monsieur Poisson, as usual, does not join me and misses out on this light drink with a dry note at the end. We order a ‘Pizza ai porcini, pancetta e basilico’ to start and the aromas of porcini are overwhelmingly inviting. The pancetta is finely chopped and not too salty, and we notice the distinct absence of garlic from this pizza which is scattered with a few leaves of rocket.

Our other primi is the ‘Capesante con riso carnaroli di timo e fave’ ordered partly out of wanting to try risottos on Dr King’s behalf and also to indulge Monsieur Poisson’s love of scallops. The scallops with roe attached are unfortunately just that tiny bit overcooked, but their sweet flavours are complemented nicely by the creamy, light lemon sauce and crunchy sweet broad beans. Interestingly, the scallops sitting atop are dressed with a tomato salsa before being topped with a herb salad.

For mains Monsieur Poisson orders the ‘Fruitti di mare con gnocchi di patate, salvia, castagne e piselli’ but I can’t remember if it’s the seafood or gnocchi that has attracted him. I’m encouraged by the mention of chestnuts but then am confused by the flavours when the dish arrives – I associate seafood with summer, chestnuts and gnocchi with winter, and peas with spring. The nutmeg-scented gnocchi (confirmed by my questioning of a waitress who had to check with the kitchen) are a flattened elongated shaped and are smooth and light in texture without risk of falling apart. However, the flavours don’t really gel for me in this dish which is topped by more of that tomato salsa.

I’ve chosen the meaty ‘Bistecca di manzo alla griglia’ that comes with duck fat roasted King Edward potatoes, broccoli and beans as well as either Béarnaise or pepper sauce. The menu says the steak is a certified 300 gram, 150-day, black Angus sirloin and is most definitely well-charred but juicy. The steak arrives unseasoned and for some reason I have chosen the Béarnaise to accompany this otherwise Italian steak. The sauce is served in a gravy boat and is devoid of herbs, which is normally Béarnaise’s distinguishing feature from Hollandaise. I am disappointed by the duck fat potatoes, only because I was expecting them to be like those served at L’étoile, and am further confounded by more of that mysterious tomato salsa adorning the steak.

Although we are quite full by this point, we make room for dessert mainly because we notice that petits fours are offered on the menu. Monsieur Poisson relaxes with a caffe latte which comes with biscotti. The biscotti are light and crumbly and not chewy like the usual, but the coffee is slightly grey in colour.

I settle back with a pot of T2 Earl Grey which is wonderfully fragrant. Our ‘Assortimento di cioccolatini e dolcetti’ is placed on the table without any introduction so we are left to guess what the eight individual components are. We assume them to be: a thin and crisp poppyseed tuille; a chocolate, cherry coconut slice; a frangipane tartlet with strawberry jam centre; a mildly bitter chocolate truffle with gooey centre; an apricot tartlet; a chocolate tartlet which is neither bitter nor sweet; an almond slice; and a chocolate stick perhaps with candied orange peel. It definitely brings a forensics component to the end of our meal!

Overall the food at Il Centro is not bad and the service is both friendly and personable. We just found the menu to be a bit confused, or perhaps it was just us that were confused by it. Nonetheless, the restaurant enjoyed an almost full crowd that night which should attest to its popularity.

Il Centro

Eagle Street Pier, 1 Eagle Street, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3221 6090

Opening Hours:  Sun-Fri  lunch from 12pm

                                    dinner from 5:30pm

                        Sat  dinner only from 5:30pm

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: Sono (again!), 22 Oct 2009

As I have said previously, you know a place is good when you want to go back for more. In the short space of spending less than a week in Brisbane Monsieur Poisson and I visited Sono twice – once for dinner, and another time for lunch. Apart from Monsieur Poisson’s love of Japanese food, the other drawcard was the prospect of swordfish sashimi which had been sold out the night of our dinner visit. He was hoping that by turning up for lunch he would beat or, at least, join the crowds who had consumed the fish he had sought after a couple of nights beforehand.

We walk in to find that the restaurant is packed and are asked to leave our name and return in roughly twenty minutes. We’re hungry but also pretty intent on having lunch here so we do a quick spot of window shopping in the meantime. When we return and are seated (at a table instead of a hole-in-the-ground booth this time), Monsieur Poisson is delighted that there is swordfish available so we order it sashimi-style. I suspect I’ve only ever had it cooked before and unfortunately find the texture of the sashimi a little grainy. The flesh is firm however, with definite striations, and I admire the lovingly shaped globe of wasabi alongside – is this much wasabi warranted for only five slices of sashimi?!

Having tried dinner at Sono already, we opt to try dishes which are exclusive to the lunch menu and Monsieur Poisson orders the tenzaru soba. The chilled soba noodles arrive on a bamboo mat next to a small cup of chilled dipping broth and a selection of tempura. The tempura batter is light both in colour and texture. The noodles are smooth on the outside but a bit floury within despite their thinness, and are definitely not as nice as the handmade ones found at Ju Ge Mu & Shimbashi. Monsieur Poisson enjoys the overall refreshing nature of the dish, and especially so due to the warm weather.

I order the sashimi bento after seeing so many of them drift past as we are browsing the menu. There are several choices for the ‘main’ component of the bento and I decide on the Japanese barbequed beef. Each component is not only placed in a separate cavity of the bento, but sits on its own little dish within each cavity. The dishes are each a different colour and the sizes of which appear to have been made to measure as they fit so snugly. Rice and miso soup with slivers of tofu skin, not the usual tofu and wakame, accompany the bento.

The red dish contains half a deep-fried soft-shell crab with shiso sauce which we already had the fortune of trying at dinner previously. My chosen main component of the bento unfortunately is a little disappointing as I was expecting a more charred tasting beef, which also happens to be a bit dry. The salad is fresh and crunchy with a light, creamy dressing and a cooked prawn on top. The plate of sashimi is generous for a bento and even comes with scallops as well as salmon evenly streaked with fat. But the resounding highlight is the final component which looks like three canapés – there is a skewered quail egg with a ‘cake’ of fish roe, a slice of beef tataki with cranberry jelly, and an intricate ‘noodle cake’ with a base of soba topped with a layer of mushroom then egg which is finally topped with a layer of cooked prawns set in gelatine. They’re so pretty that I almost cannot bring myself to eat these last three things. Almost.

We leave, as we did after dinner, with full bellies and as very satisfied customers. We head out into the sunshine and go for an extensive walk to work up an appetite for the last dinner we’ll be having in Brisbane as part of this trip.

Sono

Level 1, Tattersalls Building, cnr Queen St & Edward St, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3220 1888

Opening Hours:  Mon-Thurs  12pm-2:30pm (lunch)

                                          6pm-9:30pm (dinner)

                        Fri  12pm-2:30pm (lunch)

                              6pm-10pm (dinner)

                        Sat  6pm-10pm (dinner only)

                        Sun  CLOSED

happy eating!

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!

Five days in Brisbane: Jan Power’s Farmers Markets, 21 Oct 2009

Ahhh, glorious sunny Brisbane weather! The perfect kind of day to amble through farmers markets that happen to be right in the middle of the city. Every Wednesday, Jan Power’s Farmers Markets descend on the space at the top of Queen Street Mall next to Conrad Treasury Casino. As the seasons were definitely taking a turn for the warmer weather, the produce was vibrant and there was colour everywhere.

There were cherry truss tomatoes, massive punnets of plump strawberries, huge mushrooms, bags of unshelled macadamias and a stand that sold many varieties of potted herbs and leafy vegetables. There were samples of chocolate fudge and mango. There were stands selling macarons and large cannoli for only $3.50 (which I forgot to go back and get!), and a stand selling mini lemon meringue pies and fruit tartlets that wouldn’t let me take photos… But there was too much food to be had to dwell on that sour note, although it did mean I didn’t go back to buy a sample box of their products before we left.

Monsieur Poisson and I did the rounds before deciding what goodies we’d be picking up for lunch. We started with a traditional Cornish pastie as the line was not too long there. For $6, we were rewarded with neatly-pleated crumbly pastry holding a hot filling of meat, potato and carrot bound together by a light sauce.

Next stop was for a knackwurst roll. This was by far the most popular stand with a queue weaving down one side the whole time we were there which coincided with the office lunch hour. We chose a spicy knackwurst for $5 which included grilled onions and your choice of sauces to add at the end. Mmmm, smoky spiciness enclosed in a frankfurt casing.

We smelt the aromas of buttery pastry before we even saw the stand shrouded in a black tent, which turned out to sell baked French bread and pastries. We came away with a chocolate croissant and apple Danish for $9.70 thinking we would have them at the end of lunch, but ended up being so full that we had to take them back to the hotel room for eating much later. The wonderful part was that the pastry was still lovely and flaky even after many, many hours.

By this stage we were in need of some refreshment and I had something perfect in mind. We had seen a fresh lemonade stand and I have an extreme soft spot for the lightly fizzed tanginess of fresh lemonade. What’s more, they were promoting a new frozen lemonade product called ‘kwiish’. A large cup cost only $4.50, was frangrantly lemony and so thirst quenching after eating that knackwurst roll under the direct heat of the sun.

Our last stop was a Turkish bakery stand that smelt wonderfully garlicky. Several goods are baked onsite, including pide, so we got to try a meat and cheese one that was extremely fresh. The pide was warm and slightly crusty with a light and doughy centre. The best part was that we found some seats looking at the back of the stall where we got to witness all the action of the cutting up and rolling out of dough. Several large buckets of dough sat nearby, silently rising and pushing off their lids.

I love markets. And if I lived in Brisbane, I’m sure I would have bought things to take home for cooking. But, with this not being the case, I had to be happy with trying the prepared goods from several stands – and we were more than happy do so.

Jan Power’s Famers Markets

Bridge end of Queen Street Mall, next to Conrad Treasury Casino, Brisbane QLD

Opening Hours:  every Wed  10am-6pm (please check website for other locations and times)

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: Sono, 20 Oct 2009

Whilst wandering through Queen Street Mall we had come across the entrance to a Japanese restaurant with an LCD screen flashing pictures of its menu items near the doorway. The name, Sono, sounded familiar but for reasons which I could not quite place. A quick internet search reminded me that a Japanese restaurant bearing the same name at Hamilton was on Brisbane Times’ one-hat list. Indeed, the two are related so Monsieur Poisson took down the details in order for us to arrange an evening for dinner.

The evening that we arrive for dinner, I already know I am in for a lot of photographing as soon as my foot passes over the threshold of the doorway. The restaurant is simply stunning from the moment you step from Queen Street Mall into the Tattersalls Building. An exclusive staircase is flanked by vertical banners advertising the restaurant beckoning your arrival. At the top of the staircase is a massive wooden plaque bearing the kanji character for ‘sono’ (園), meaning a garden or a park, which is adjacent to a glass push-through door into the restaurant. The light cherry wood theme is carried throughout the restaurant in its walls, dividers, sushi bar, table seating and hole-in-the-ground seating. At the far corner is a balcony area overlooking Queen Street and Edward Street with an outdoor Zen garden.

We have made a table reservation and, although it was not requested, we have the fortune of being seated at one of the hole-in-the-ground tables. Waitresses in different coloured yukata lightly pad around the restaurant and one shows us to our table. The booths are separated by wooden partitions to provide privacy and the one we are seated at is designed for four people. There are sitting cushions to make things more comfortable and warm handtowels to greet us. Staff are diligent in rearranging shoes left at the edge of hole-in-the-ground booths so that the tip of the shoes face outwards, making it just that little bit more convenient for patrons when leaving or when taking trips to the loo. It is a lovely and considerate touch.

The menu is quite extensive and we seem to spend absolutely ages deciding what to eat. Monsieur Poisson is excited to find not only uni but also swordfish sashimi on the menu but, alas, both are sold out from that day’s lunch session. So we rethink our options and start with the gyu tataki that does not come with the usual ponzu dressing, but is instead served with sliced spring onions, finely minced ginger, finely minced garlic and what we think is finely minced garlic with chilli oil all arranged on discs of radish. It’s fun to pair mouthfuls of beef with the differing accompaniments, and I feel more of the beef’s flavour is allowed to shine through than when doused in the usual dressing.

The soft-shell crab karaage is deep-fried with the lightest dusting of flour and has obviously been carefully presented so that the legs resemble a perched claw atop the plate. The menu says it is served with a shiso sauce but I can only see a finely chopped salsa of red onion, cucumber and tomato. Perhaps shiso leaves were used to impart flavour to the light and tangy salsa.

When Monsieur Poisson and I were perusing the menu we came across something that we had never seen before – chawanmushi. The menu describes it as ‘steamed savoury egg custard’ so we immediately draw comparisons to Chinese steamed egg and decide we have to give it a try. It arrives as a small, lidded urn on its own heat mat with a teaspoon alongside. We remove the lid and are welcomed by aromas of Asian-flavoured stock wafting up our nostrils. The surface is smooth like a block of tofu and the egg is seductively silken. It even wobbles a little when the urn is moved. Within the steamed egg mixture, there is sliced kamaboko, chicken pieces, small prawns, vegetables and the occasional piece of unagi. We sit back in food-induced euphoria and wonder how we could have never come across this dish before!

Next we have the otsumami udon from Sono’s October specials menu. It features multiple small individual serves of cold udon with different cold toppings and is presented in little Asian-style teacup-type dishes on a bed of ice chips held in a shallow wooden basin.

One serve of udon is topped with a very mild curry and is the only one to use thick udon noodles – all the other serves employ a thinner, flatter udon that is shaped like a larger version of linguine. Another dish is topped with a tempura prawn and smoky dressing. The third udon is dressed with soy sauce and has a beautiful soft-poached egg yolk sitting on top which, when punctured, reveals a sticky golden centre that we attribute to it having been chilled. The final serve is also dressed with soy but has thin rounds of lush green okra on top. The whole dish is tasty, refreshing and light and would be ideal in hot weather.

Also from the October specials menu, we have the unagi tsutsumi yaki which has grilled eel with an assortment of mushrooms enclosed in a lotus leaf before being roasted. It arrives at our table smelling charred but fragrant of lotus leaf. Interestingly, there is also a thick slice of yellow zucchini resting in between the two pieces of tender unagi.

Although Monsieur Poisson missed out on both uni and swordfish sashimi, his other favourite of scampi is fortunately available. We order the nigiri and a serve of two pieces arrive with the head arranged to be resting on its body. The flesh is very sweet and firm with a slight amount of chill, and is topped with tiny tobiko.

To finish the meal, we go for something with a bit more rice and order the chirashi sushi mainly because I am attracted by the picture in the menu. It comes with miso soup and doesn’t disappoint with thick slices of fish and scallop sashimi atop a thick bed of vinegared sushi rice.

But we can’t be finished as there is always still dessert! Monsieur Poisson is disappointed to hear me declare that I am too full for dessert as he has two preferred options in mind. He concedes to ordering only the azuki ice-cream cake, of which there are two pieces sitting on a handled plate. The flavour is not overly sweet but the texture is unfortunately a little icy. The thin layer of sponge underneath aids in halting any melting ice-cream run-off.

The meal is not cheap but we leave feeling very satisfied both in hunger and in value. Not only has the food been excellent with great attention to detail and presentation, but the service is most polite and attentive. These factors combined with the array of servingware has us making comparisons to our wonderful recent meal at Koi.

Sono

Level 1, Tattersalls Building, cnr Queen St & Edward St, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3220 1888

Opening Hours:  Mon-Thurs  12pm-2:30pm (lunch)

                                          6pm-9:30pm (dinner)

                        Fri  12pm-2:30pm (lunch)

                              6pm-10pm (dinner)

                        Sat  6pm-10pm (dinner only)

                        Sun  CLOSED

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: L’s Espresso Bar & Yogen Früz, 20 October 2009

We had passed by L’s Espresso Bar in Brisbane Arcade, a quaint little eatery that wouldn’t look out of place in a small town, during our quick wander through the city the previous day. It looked quite cute and had a nice sounding breakfast menu, which is how we ended up here the following day. It was after 11am by the time we walked in so we asked if they still served breakfast. Unfortunately the answer was no, so we chose items from the lunch menu instead.

Orders are placed at the counter at L’s Espresso Bar and you’re given a table number before finding yourself a table. Monsieur Poisson and I decide to perch ourselves at the bench seat looking out the front window of the store into the arcade. Most of the tables in this café are for two people and are occupied this particular morning by elderly patrons. Monsieur Poisson’s caffe latte arrives soon after but is a bit weak tasting. The brand of coffee is Merlo but neither of us are familiar with it.

Food-wise, I’ve ordered a toasted sandwich of smoked salmon, avocado, capers and onion on Turkish bread. Sound familiar? I think I ordered this stemming from our lunch the previous day which had not exactly met our expectations. The sandwich here arrives on thick pide with a thick slice of smoked salmon, lots of avocado, scattered capers and chopped spring onions. When I had read ‘onion’ on the menu board, I was expecting sliced red onion, as that is the usual, but not in this case. However this is easily rectified by picking off the spring onions. There is also a side salad of coleslaw with pleasant honey mustard dressing.

Monsieur Poisson has ordered himself a bacon and pineapple open melt for nostalgia reasons – apparently as a child, his mother made this for him frequently as an after-school snack. The surprising part when it arrives is that there is only one slice of bread, albeit a sizeable inch-thick one. There are plenty of tinned pineapple pieces intermingling with bacon pieces underneath a blanket of melted cheese, and more of the same salad on the side.

We leave to go for a walk around the city and to familiarise ourselves with directions and landmarks. By mid-afternoon the sun is beaming down and it is quite warm. We pass by a yoghurt joint and decide to have a sticky-beak to see what cooling refreshments are on offer.

We walk in and I am immediately transfixed by the multiple cool-fridge displays of tubs upon tubs of ingredients. We (okay, maybe it was just me) must have looked either curious, lost, bewildered or a combination of all three, because before long we are approached by a staff member explaining how their yoghurt concept works.

It’s a custom frozen yoghurt bar where there are various flavour bases where you can have frozen fruits blended in and/or other toppings sprinkled over the top sundae-style. There are numerous breakfast choices, like muesli and dried fruits, so you are not limited to the yoghurt being only a dessert-type snack.

Monsieur Poisson chooses to try the flavour-of-the-month matcha (green tea) frozen yoghurt while I go for the plain yoghurt to have raspberries and blackberries smooshed through. The matcha is a delight and is incredibly fragrant of green tea. It’s like eating matcha soft-serve that is firmer and less creamy in texture, with the slight after-taste of yoghurt. It is luxuriously smooth but melts more quickly than my berry one.

In contrast, my berry yoghurt is icier no doubt due to the inclusion of frozen berries. The texture is also rougher from the berry seed bits but what I love is the wonderful tartness of berries married with the tang of the yoghurt. I eat it a bit too quickly and suffer several brain-freezes in the process.

We were given a customer loyalty card at Yogen Früz but didn’t get a chance to use it again before we left. And not being from Brisbane ourselves, we wondered when we would get to use it again…

L’s Espresso Bar

Ground floor of Brisbane Arcade, 117 Adelaide St, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3210 6900

Yogen Früz

225 Albert Street Mall, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3211 1338

happy eating!

LATEST UPDATE: Yogen Früz has recently opened an outlet at World Square Shopping Centre and apparently there is an outlet at Westfield Hornsby as well. Their website also says there is a store coming to Chatswood soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Five days in Brisbane: Jo-Jo’s, 19 Oct 2009

As we didn’t have lunch at Coffee & Chocolate until late, dinner was subsequently pushed back to a later than usual time as well. Being our first day in Brisbane and not having booked anywhere, we needed somewhere where we could just walk in and pretty much be guaranteed a table. That’s how we came to be at Jo-Jo’s, with its rainbow logo and located up a white granite staircase from Queen Street Mall.

The interior is just as white and we find ourselves a table near the balcony section which overlooks both paved malls. It is a balmy evening and we don’t mind the gentle breeze. I wonder about where I’ve seen the rainbow logo before, and when I spot a poster of Stefan the hairdresser it all makes sense – I later read that it is his restaurant.

A friendly waitress brings us menus and a table number and explains how Jo-Jo’s works: you order from any of the counters positioned around the perimeter of the restaurant, pay and cite your table number, and wait for the food to arrive. That’s when I look around the place and realise that Jo-Jo’s is a miniature food court unto itself with three ‘kitchens’ providing grill, Mediterranean and Oriental ‘cuisines’. The menu is broken into corresponding sections to reflect the split kitchens.

Intrigued by this concept, I go for a look-see around the restaurant to check out what’s available at each counter. The only things on display are salads with everything else being prepared to order behind the scenes. My wander also opens my eyes to the kitschy ornaments dotting the place – there is a chef statuette, a statue of a dog perched on its hind legs and leaning up on one of the kitchen counters, a large eagle and a Buddha statue amongst others. It’s like Gianni Versace’s style gone wrong.

We order drinks from the waitress and pay her directly when she reappears with them. Two large glasses of soft-drink comes only to $7. Monsieur Poisson and I decide what we want and he goes off to the appropriate counters to order.

Our food arrives fairly quickly so we’re grateful we’ve chosen a larger table to accommodate the three large plates. First up is ‘Jo-Jo’s Garlic Pizza’ on a crisp base which is seriously, intensely garlicky. There is crushed garlic underneath a golden layer of cheese as well as what appears to be pureed garlic oil drizzled near the edge of the crust. It is quite bitey and just a tad oily where the cut pieces meet in the centre.

On my rounds I noticed Greek salad being offered by two different kitchens so I specified to Monsieur Poisson which I thought looked better and for him to order it from the corresponding counter. Our resultant salad, however, seems to have been served from the other, less-desired kitchen and presents with a mysterious brown dressing. There are generous cubes of creamy fetta, wedges of tomatoes, plump Kalamata olives and slices of cucumber arranged with salad greens, which really could be done away with if in a ‘true’ Greek salad. And the brown dressing? It tastes like nothing in particular – not creamy, not tangy, not salty and pretty much devoid of having any flavour at all.

The serves are quite generous but, not knowing this, we have also ordered the ‘Moreton Bay Bug Fettucine’. This proves to be our favourite of the evening with fresh, not dried, pasta tossed with small pieces of bug meat, caponata and salsa verde. Monsieur Poisson doesn’t like the peppery watercress garnishing the pasta but I quite like the contrast it brings and how it cuts through some of the expected oiliness of the caponata. The caponata is spiked with chopped olives which are not overly salty and a bug tail laid on top of the pasta finishes off the dish.

Jo-Jo’s provides decent food of ample size at value prices. The dessert counter doesn’t look too promising but we’re too full to want dessert anyway. We leave virtually clutching our stomachs and go for a short stroll through the city to work off some of our meal before heading back to the hotel.

Jo-Jo’s

Level 1, cnr Queen Street Mall & Albert Street Mall, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3221 2113

Opening Hours:  7 days  9:30am-11:30pm

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: Coffee & Chocolate, 19 Oct 2009

Monsieur Poisson and I spent just short of a week in Brisbane back in October for a mini-getaway. Apart from the fact that I had never been to the sunny city before, I also wanted to go somewhere warm for once. All the other trips we have ever taken together have been during the colder months of the year, so I was looking forward to a holiday where we didn’t have the need to lug coats and boots.

This trip was planned at somewhat short notice so I didn’t get a chance to research places to eat as extensively as when we went to Melbourne, but I did get to consult Gastronomy Gal for some recommendations. I unfortunately didn’t do her suggestions any justice as we didn’t make it to any of them, mainly because we were lazy and stuck to places close to where we were staying.

After arriving in Brisbane and checking into the hotel by the early afternoon, we head out for a stroll through the city in search of a late lunch. We wander into Queens Plaza and I am attracted by a kiosk café with the simple name of Coffee & Chocolate. I often bring back chocolates from various trips and I immediately rush over to press my nose against the display cabinet.

Some of the chocolates look similar to those I’ve seen in Melbourne from The Chocolate Box and Cacao but I hold off buying any in favour of having lunch first instead. The process of which involves ordering at the counter, collecting a table number, seating yourself and waiting for the food to arrive. The bulk of the food consists of pre-prepared rolls, quiches and pastries sitting in a display window. There are no visible prices so I am a bit lost when the waitress asks me, “Did you want a side salad with those?” – does this mean the salad is an optional inclusion, or an optional extra?

Monsieur Poisson orders an iced chocolate to try, seeing as chocolate is part of the store’s namesake, but we are grossly disappointed. The poor execution and presentation of chocolate syrup sunken to the bottom of the glass did not give us a good first impression. It might taste wonderful!, we remind ourselves, but we are disappointed in this department as well because the chocolate flavour is muted despite the presence of what appears to be ample syrup. We’d like more chocolate in our iced chocolate please!

To eat, I’ve ordered the ‘Salmon Bagle’ [sic] which is not actually served on a bagel but rather pide. Within the pide is a filling of smoked salmon, ricotta and iceberg lettuce which is slightly wilted from the whole thing having been toasted in a sandwich press. The side salad comes with a sweet chilli vinaigrette-type dressing, but there is much less of this dressing on Monsieur Poisson’s side salad compared to mine. He has ordered the chicken and mushroom filo which arrives looking rather pale.

The filo roll is warm to the centre so we know it has been heated adequately, but somehow the pastry itself is still light in colour and seems undercooked. It is neither crispy nor flaky and there are very few mushrooms inside. There is a generous fillet of chicken within the roll which is wrapped in a slice of ham, but there is an overwhelming amount of thick, white sauce hogging the rest of the space. We remove and leave most of this sauce behind.

We were left quite unsatisfied following this meal and its accompanying price tag of $39.50, which entailed almost no table service and of which we did not know the breakdown. Needless to say, we finished our food and left without trying their coffee or purchasing any of the aforementioned chocolates.

Coffee & Chocolate

Shop KUL-01, Level 1, Queens Plaza, 226 Queen St, Brisbane QLD

Tel: (07) 3229 7799

Opening Hours:  Mon  7:30am-5pm

Tues-Thurs  7:30am-5:30pm

Fri  7:30am-9pm

Sat  7:30am-5:30pm

Sun  9am-4pm

happy eating!