Usually when I travel, I tend to try and research some of the best places for unique foods that aren’t commonly available at home. For Brisbane, I had a few things on my list, starting with Il Centro, a higher end Italian restaurant along the water near Eagle Pier.
They open at 5pm for dinner, but when I arrived, they advised that their kitchen doesn’t open until 5:30pm. This was a bit strange to me, as I wasn’t used to having a restaurant be open without the kitchen being ready. I decided to walk around the area for 30 minutes before heading back to the restaurant.
The menu item that is mentioned over and over again when it comes to Il Centro is the Sand Crab Lasagna. You can choose from a half portion ($29) or a full portion ($41), and seeing as I had traveled half way around the world to try this lasagna, I went with the full portion.
The sand crab lasagna tasted exactly as I expected. Delicious crab filled noodles, enveloped in a salty, rich, cream sauce. I’m really glad I went with the full portion as even then, it wasn’t that large and could easily be finished in about 6 bites!
My second stop would be a place close to my hotel, called Public. Public is unique in that it serves an item called KFD, which stands for Kentucky Fried Duck. It received rave reviews online, so I had to give it a try. The restaurant was actually closing within the hour, so I decided to call ahead and order KFD for take-out. When I arrived at the restaurant, the manager came over and said that after she took my order, they realized they had ran out of KFD, so she worked with the chef to put something else together for me instead, and it would be complimentary. Perhaps they were scrambling to come up with something, but I ended up having to wait at the restaurant for quite a while before my order was ready. When one of the waiters finally brought it out to me, he thought he still had to take payment, and it was as if he had no clue about the conversation that the manager and I had. The second thing that was a bit strange was that after I explained that it was to be free, because I couldn’t get what I wanted, the waiter said that I did end up getting an order of KFD. Needless to say, we were all very confused and the original manager I spoke to was nowhere in sight, so I just ended up leaving.
To be honest, I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for this because I didn’t really enjoy the dish at all. There were 2 pieces of duck breast that was covered in a thin, flaky coating and it was really over seasoned. The duck was really salty and rubbery and also had a very strong parmesan smell that overpowered the taste of the duck. The corn bread that came with the duck was much better than the duck itself.
One of my favourite meals in Brisbane was at Gauge, a small little restaurant that is usually only open at night, but does offer breakfast and lunch on the weekends. I’ve read about their black garlic bread and how it almost has a cult following, so I knew I had to try it out.
It might sound funny to have garlic bread for breakfast, but this isn’t the typical garlic bread I was used to. This looked more like a breakfast loaf of some sort, and is served from breakfast to dinner. The bread is served with a brown butter and burnt vanilla spread, and they are very generous with the amount as I didn’t even end up using half of it. The bread had a soft and pillowy texture even though it was quite dense. It is actually not as flavourful was I had expected, but that is where the brown butter and burnt vanilla spread comes in. The rich and creamy spread was a perfect complement to the subtle taste of the bread.
I had tried Betty’s Burgers in the Gold Coast earlier in the week and loved it so much that when I passed one in Brisbane, I couldn’t help but go in and grab that same burger again for the second time in 3 days. I still reminisce about that burger and hope that one day, they can expand to Canada!
This time, I decided to order one of their concretes as well, seeing as how they are famous for both their burgers and their concretes. I figured that if their burgers could be that good, their concretes must be equally good.
For me, I would definitely go back again for their burgers, but will pass on the concretes in the future. It’s not that I didn’t like it, but don’t have that big of a sweet tooth, so I would much rather use up my calories on that delicious burger.
Although I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I did end up purchasing some brownies from Dello Mano to try. Rumour has it that Ashton Kutcher imports these brownies and they’ve also been enjoyed by other celebrities. They are definitely delicious but perhaps is that lack of a sweet tooth again. I don’t think I will be importing these any time soon.
My last meal in Brisbane was at Papparich. One of the things that I envy about Australia is the amount of good South East Asian restaurants they have, including the Papparich chain. I ordered the char kway teow and some chicken skin and the char kway teow turned out to be delicious. The chicken skin on the other hand was hard, barely chewable and tasted like it was over fried. I asked the waitress about it and they gave me a different plate, but it was the same, so I could only conclude that they don’t do chicken skin very well.
Two full days of eating in Brisbane resulted in me getting to try foods that I haven’t had before. This is definitely one of my favourite reasons to travel!
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