There’s something special about heritage places, especially when they’ve been reborn. It’s as though those who’ve gone before have trod the floorboards, breathed the air and imbued into the building a sense of place. There’s all that and more at The Island. The original five-level tower, built in 1964 by Greg Graham and Bill Reichelt,...

As we reach the shortest day of the year, winter chills creep in as the sun sinks behind the hills. We linger in tracky dacks, loathe to venture out, content to reach for comfort food in the shelter of warm homes. The winter solstice or ‘Yuletide’ marks a turning point from which days get longer,...

Sometimes dreams take us to unexpected places. At least, so it seems for Thai Mudgee’s owner Siranee Hocheuay, known to her guests as ‘Boo’. After moving to Sydney from Central Thailand, Boo fell in love with the Gold Coast when visiting friends. “It was just like my home town,” Boo tells us. “In King Street,...

Many storms are followed by a rainbow. When we gather on a bright winter’s day in June for a long table lunch beside the lake at Mavis’s Kitchen, we are thinking celebration. But the sobering trip along the Tweed reminds us of the devastation caused by the flood just two months before. Grass, beaten into...

There’s always been something special about Mudgeeraba – a village feel that embraces locals as family. Typical of that spirit, Woodchoppers Inn, Mudgeeraba’s original restaurant and bar, has been family owned since 1995. A stayer in the local food scene, their recent change of menu direction has given the venue new interest. Built in 1906...

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Evergreen was all the rage for a family breakfast or brunch for ‘ladies who lunch’. A verdant wild jungle in the middle of busy suburbia, replete with overflowing water fountains and voluminous plants, owner/chef Robert Powell and his wife Lynne employed a bevy of young wait staff to...

Not everyone can boast cooking for Beyonce, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Parker-Bowles family, running the company that catered for clients such as Ruinart champagne and Kate Moss, or co-owning Barbacoa, one of the most successful restaurants in Bali. But travelling the world with his supermodel wife, cooking for the stars and running high-pressure events,...

It’s a magical night under a full moon in an Italian vineyard lit by fairy lights and candles; a sumptuous Italian feast accompanied by prosecco spritzers, our entertainment a string quartet, ballet and opera. This is the Gold Coast at its best – a balmy evening, a fairly casual event celebrating talent we rarely see....

It was to be a ‘wild food’ garden feast – five courses made from local and hyper-local produce held in the gardens of the magnificent Mavis’s Kitchen, Uki. As the sun descended on the afternoon, seventy people gathered to have a dinner with friends and strangers at two long linen-clad tables strewn with magnolia branches,...

It’s hard to miss Balboa as you drive through Palm Beach. Its red brick two-storey building, once a quite unremarkable office block, now forms an imposing picture; even more so at night when the interior emanates a warm glow and the tables spill over with food, drinks and good times. The latest venture of Avvia...