Brisbane’s most exciting restaurant openings of 2024 (so far)

All-day dining, a return of French cooking and fire – lots and lots of fire. They’re the rough themes of Brisbane’s best restaurant openings so far in 2024.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in food and beverage presently, with rising costs and debts left over from the pandemic beginning to bite.

But Brisbane, having avoided longer COVID lockdowns and now steaming towards the Olympics, is arguably better placed than the southern capitals to weather the storm, and the venues listed below illustrate there will always be room for good operators doing interesting things.

Here’s what has caught our eye so far this year.

Petite, Fortitude Valley

Petite, brothers Cameron and Jordan Votan’s fifth venue (or sixth if you count Mini, the next-door French pop-up that acted as a testbed for its food), was a long time coming but the final result proved worth the wait.

Petite retains the open feel of the brothers’ popular Happy Boy and Snack Man eateries, but with a more precise design. It references a French bistro with a leather banquette, imported vintage chandeliers and bentwood chairs, but crosses it with an industrial touch.

Petite’s cleverly arranged menu is collection of 20 plates down one side and matching wines listed down the other. But it’s not intended to be dogmatic – a wine either side of the match will work just as well.

There’s also a longer bottle list for those eager to explore the restaurant’s collection of small-grower French drops, which includes a chunky selection of cremant and champagne.

Chef Aubrey Courtel’s food is a continuation of what worked best at the Mini pop-up that ran next door in the old Kid Curry space for the eight months.

For smaller plates you can order goat’s cheese croquettes, steak tartare with confit yolk and pommes gaufrettes, or a pork terrine with onion jam and cornichons, served with bread.

Larger plates include pan-fried gnocchi with a comte cream, pan-fried fish finished with a beurre blanc, confit duck with potato mash and a duck jus, and a chargrilled grass-fed eye fillet with pepper cognac sauce and frites.

Gum Bistro, West End

Gum opened in April in the Boundary Street premises previously occupied by Pasta Club.

The bones of the old timber shop remain much the same (including the charmingly wonky floor at the back of the restaurant), but owners Phil Poussart and Lachlan Matheson have installed a banquette and some new tabletops, and given the dining room a fresh coat of white paint, lending it a brighter, more airy feel.

Matheson is cooking a tight, seasonal menu of local produce designed to be shared. Smaller plates include a duck liver parfait with mandarin jelly: fried The Falls Farm eggplant with tomato, shallot and herbs; and pipis with oyster mushrooms, young ginger and basil.

For larger plates, there’s pan-fried cobia with zucchini, chard and hakurei turnip; a vegetable pot pie with caramelised onion and gruyere; and quail served with king and oyster mushrooms.

For wines, Poussart has compiled a tight 60-bottle list with most drops going for less than $120 a pop. Expect local wines lined up against labels from France, Sicily, Slovenia and the US.

There’s also a reserve list for bottles the restaurant has picked up from more limited supplier allocations.

Longwang, CBD

Restaurateur Michael Tassis has been on a tear these past 12 months, opening seafood restaurant Fosh and two steakhouses, Rich & Rare in West End and Fatcow on James Street.

Longwang, though, might be the most ambitious, in part because of its unique design – the multi-level venue, slotted into what was once a CBD laneway, is just 3½ metres wide – and also because it has gun chef Jason Margaritis (formerly Donna Chang, Same Same and Melbourne’s Spice Temple) onboard as partner.

Margaritis is cooking a Hong Kong-inspired menu full of flavour, texture and colour.

You might order seared scallops with strange flavour sauce, macadamia, sesame and crispy chilli; steamed pork and prawn wontons in a tonkotsu broth with spring onion, sesame and black garlic oil; charcoal grilled Skull Island prawns with salted duck-egg butter, sansho pepper and gochugaru (Korean red chilli paste); or a fiery bug tail meat “kung pao” with cashews, and sichuan pepper corns.

Elsewhere, there are smoked river trout and roasted pork belly salads, and a live-seafood menu that includes South Australian pipis, Tasmanian rock lobster and Queensland mud crab.

For wine, there’s a 110-bottle wine list that globe trots for varietals to match the spice of the food. There’s also an imaginative list of signature cocktails.

Designed by regular Tassis regulars Clui Design, Longwang is fitted out in great runs of marble, green tiling and glass surfaces, with plenty of greenery dotted around the place. Two staircases, one at either end to the restaurant, lead to the upper floors, where there is booth dining and a bar that features a semicircular balcony with views over Edward Street.

Bar Miette, CBD

Announced relatively late and slotted into the Queen Street floor of the flash new 443 Queen Street residential tower, Bar Miette is a shrewd move by owners Andrew McConnell and Jo McGann, giving Brisbane a Trader House venue of its very own a month before the group opens Melbourne import Supernormal downstairs on the river.

This is very much an open-air affair, with the majority of Bar Miette’s 90 seats on a winsome terrace overlooking the river and Story Bridge.

Regular Trader House designers ACME have delivered the feel of a European leaning wine bar through the use of green, yellow and blush-pink rattan furniture, and custom-made brick-coloured tables outside, and a striking timber and sculpted beaten copper bar inside.

For food, hatted executive chef Jason Barratt (formerly Paper Daisy) is overseeing two relatively straightforward menus: one for breakfast, and a second for lunch and dinner.

In the morning you can order a house-made spelt crumpet with whipped maple butter, walnut and banana; avocado toast with a boiled egg, miso butter and sesame; a croque monsieur; and house-cured and smoked trout with seeded rye crackers, sour cream, pickles, dill and roe.

Later in the day, there are cured plates; seafood such as poached local king prawns with sauce rouille, raw Hervey Bay scallops with seaweed vinaigrette, and slow-cooked marinated octopus with potato, aioli and paprika; and items to have on toast such as crab mayonnaise, stracciatella, anchovy and pistachio, and tuna with smoked butter and chives.

There also salads and sides such as a cold roast chicken salad with celeriac, horseradish, capers and a tarragon mustard dressing; and a beef carpaccio number with marinated artichokes, parmesan and black pepper.

For drinks, there’s a thoughtful cocktail menu that twists the classics, and a 70-bottle Euro-leaning wine list, with good portion of the cellar dedicated to champagne.

Emme, Fortitude Valley

Emme opened in late April in the old Spoon Deli space at James Street Market. It’s former Greca head chef Tze Lian’s first restaurant as co-owner.

Another partner in the business is Sultan Amesheh, with much of the menu inspired by the Amesheh family’s Moroccan and Jordanian heritage – Tze Lian’s and sous chef Fin Burgess’ experience in Mediterranean and woodfired cooking, respectively (Burgess was formerly sous chef at Essa), does the rest.

Emme offers all-day service, with the menu split into breakfast, and then lunch and dinner.

In the morning, you might order poached eggs with pickled eggplant, walnuts, labneh, chilli and sourdough; an avo on toast with harissa and a native dukkah; or a crab omelette with chives, Aleppo chilli and sourdough.

Later in the day there’s a char-grilled baby squid salad with ’nduja, herbs and shallot; a swordfish kofta; pipis with harissa butter and black lime; barbecue chicken with garlic yoghurt and shishitos; and a 300-gram wagyu sirloin with spiced mustard.

For drinks, there’s a relatively brief 50-bottle wine list designed not to be too deferential to the food.

The design of the restaurant’s 40-seat dining room was handled by Sultan Amesheh before being finessed Alkot Studio’s Barbara Albert (there are 40 more seats outside during the day around an espresso machine that punches out Five Senses coffee).

It’s an understated looker defined by an enormous stone dining counter, an eye-catching textured concrete wall, and cross-hatched acoustic panelling on the ceiling. Taking pride of place in the open kitchen is a wood-fired oven and hearth produced by Melbourne’s The Brick Chef, which handles much of the cooking.

Monal Dining, Newstead

In January, Yogesh Budathoki teamed up with his cousin Roman Bhandari to create this 55-seater, which has been turning heads with Newstead locals.

Budathoki has bounced around the dining scene in recent years. Until 2023, he was sous chef at Honto, one of the city’s best Japanese-inspired restaurants, and he’s also worked at The Calile, Greca and Yoko. He’s poured all that experience into a menu that Budathoki and front-of-house manager Bhandari describe as “modern Australian”.

On the snacks and small plates menu, there are wagyu intercostal skewers with labneh, tuna tartare with fried potato and bottarga, and Mooloolaba king prawns with XO butter and mustard cress.

Larger plates include roasted chicken glazed with lemon molasses and finished with a curry sauce, and grilled barramundi with a spring onion and ginger relish, and finished with a light soy broth.

The Australian theme stretches to the drinks with a 70(ish)-bottle wine list that mostly favours independent local producers. Otherwise, there are six signature cocktails and a clutch of beers.

For Monal’s fit-out, Clui Design helped deliver a neat little restaurant, the defining feature a green leather banquette that traces along the Skyring Terrace side of the venue. There’s nothing show-stopping like an open kitchen or a fiery hearth, but then that keeps the focus on the food.

Fatcow, Fortitude Valley

Michael Tassis (Longwang, Massimo, Yamas et al.) opened Fatcow in May on the ground floor of the old boutique David Jones store on the intersection of James and Mclachlan streets.

Regular Tassis design firm Clui has given Fatcow a dark, moody and slightly glitzy vibe: the venue is furnished in black leather, timber and parquet floors, with white marble counters and mirrored ceilings. Much of the seating is arranged in intimate booths sectioned off from one another by sheer white curtains.

Chef Garry Newton is using a parrilla grill to focus on steak, with Black Angus cuts ranging from a 180-gram, grass-feed eye fillet up to a 28-day dry-aged 800-gram T-bone. There’s also a wagyu menu from which you can order a 150-gram, 12-score A5 eye fillet, or a fourth-cross tomahawk or rib on the bone by the 100 grams.

Seafood also features heavily. There are raw scallops with a coconut dressing, kaffir lime-pickled turnip and chilli oil; raw kingfish with smoked ponzu, plums and shiso; and baked Patagonian toothfish served with a parsley puree and pickled turnips. There’s also live seafood from the tank, including oysters.

The wine list runs to more than 300 bottles and includes the requisite big Australian shirazes and cabernets alongside impressive selections of champagne, burgundy, New Zealand pinot and vintage Italian reds.

There’s also a cocktail list that includes an Old Fashioned menu.

Ach, Hamilton

You’ll find Ach in an oddly isolated location, on Hamilton’s MacArthur Avenue surrounded by empty lots. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming popular with locals, much of its clientele drawn from the businesses in the new development above, and the apartments at the eastern end of the North Shore precinct.

Owners Noam Lissner, Marty Coard, Mia Nguyen and Mat Drummond have labelled Ach a wine bar, but that’s perhaps more to set the mood of the place rather than the constraints of what’s put in front of you.

The majority of the food is being prepped using a wood-fire hearth custom-made by Sumner’s Bullockhead Creek.

Expect the menu to change regularly according to what’s in season, but you might order baked Hokkaido scallops with fermented chilli butter and lamb bacon; cabbage skewers with borani and an eggplant glaze; Margra lamb ribs with harira, kibbeh and chermoula; or market fish shashlik with preserved lemon labneh, grape and black lime.

The wine list is full of interesting drops, from a Mersel Phoenix skin contact white made with merwah (a light-skinned grape genetically similar to semillon and chardonnay), to a Suertes del Marques 7 Fuentes listán negro and tintilla blend from the Canary Islands. The rest of the cellar comprises mostly Australian producers.

The design of the venue was largely handled by the team themselves. They’ve kept the space simple and open to the elements, the walls painted a cool green to match the lush garden beds that surround the restaurant.

Bar Rocco, Coorparoo

Chef Ashley-Mareee Kent’s Bar Rocco opened in December, too late to make our 2023 year-end lists, so is included here instead.

It may be called a “bar” and, yes, there’s a big drinks focus – in this case a 50-bottle wine list and a selection of cocktails – but it’s the food that ultimately takes centre stage.

Kent is using a stackable coal-fired grill custom-made by Samford’s The Brick Chef to anchor a menu that changes regularly depending on the seasons.

For small plates, you might order dishes such as charred focaccia with either Olasagasti anchovies, or whipped ricotta, tomato, basil and balsamic; a crumbed veal panino with brown butter, sage, capers and rocket; and crocchette di patate with parmigiano, scarmoza and peppers.

Pizzette come from the oven next door at Ramona Trattoria – also owned by Kent – and include an ’nduja, honey parmigiano and mascarpone number, and mortadella, pistachio and stracciatella.

From the grill you can order smaller plates such as Skull Island tiger prawns with capers, herb and lemon, or house-made sausage with beans and smoked tomato butter. The large plates are a six-score picanha tagliata Wagyu with rocket and parmigiano, and spada alla ghiotta (swordfish with tomatoes, olives, capers and oregano).

The wine list, compiled by sommelier Olivia Evans, ranges beyond Italy with plenty of champagne, and Austrian and Portuguese drops, with a handful available via Coravin. A generously sized selection of cocktails includes a spritz menu and a batch-made, panettone-infused Negroni.