Le Café Gourmand

A display of brightly coloured chairs on the Cronulla corner of the highway in Mermaid Beach marks a little French café / restaurant! The bright attitude is obvious. “Here I am!” the chairs exclaim: Le Café Gourmand! One of our fondest memories of France is wandering through little country villages, ‘discovering’ a café to enjoy […]

The Milkman’s Daughter

We love pretty spaces and pretty food but, even more, food needs to taste great and be good for us. It’s the fuel we choose, after all. Sometimes these factors don’t all come together. Sometimes Instagram leads to unrealistic expectations and, in the ‘flesh’, the food experience disappoints. Opened by the very creative Morgan Walsh […]

The Brick Café

The Brick Café is not what it may first appear. A smart little café at the front of a new commercial complex in Molendinar, behind this façade of newness there’s a strong family heritage. If we’d looked more closely at the top of the menu, the clue was there all along: ‘The Brick Café by […]

A Weekend in the Rainforest

It’s the perfect winter escape away from the Gold Coast and into the forest; a weekend away in the Tweed Valley. The Tweed holds many attractions to explore: the magnificent Tweed Art Gallery, Mavis’s Kitchen with its own kitchen garden, Carool’s coffee plantations, winery and Potager, as well as craft galleries and farms set in […]

Tonic on Chirn, Labrador

With the village-like hub of Chirn Park a rising star in Gold Coast dining, Tonic on Chirn is a tried and true local hero, an establishment where we can recommend food, drink, ambience and service as being equally important and on point. Walk into Tonic on Chirn, and you could be mistaken for thinking that […]

Black Lime Café

While ‘Location, location, location’ is the big catch cry to success, there are some local favourites that have achieved modest success by going against the norm, choosing venues in hidden pockets of suburbia. There, they provide service to locals who previously had no food outlets nearby. That’s how it is with Black Lime Café. Tucked […]

First Fruits Coffee Café & Roastery

It’s been almost two years since Daniel Smith set up First Fruits Coffee with a business partner in a tiny space in Ashmore. Visiting the Cotlew Street alleyway shopfront where they not only roasted beans but also sold coffee, space was at a premium. Sitting on coffee bags was almost an option! From the level […]

The Roost @ 53

It had been bucketing rain during the night but Mel had been up since 3am baking the Turkish buns for our breakfast. She didn’t know the buns would be for us, but we’d decided the night before that we’d score an early brekkie at The Roost@53 on the way to work. The Roost@53 is not […]

Euphoria Espresso Café

It’s a pleasant surprise when you don’t expect too much from a corner coffee shop and then find out that all the food’s made by the chef in the oven you can see, that the coffee’s great and the service friendly and attentive. Euphoria Espresso Café is a rare watering hole in the urban jungle […]

Frigg Café

The pizza arrives, a steaming plateful of cheesy topping dripping over the edges of the crust onto the giant-sized plate. It’s huge, far too big for my appetite, and this is only one slice of pizza! It’s lunchtime in Disneyland, the place ‘where all your dreams come true.’ Someone’s dreams, perhaps, but some of my […]