From hole-in-the wall lamb ramen and a wine shop from TV’s Matt Okine, to blockbuster restaurants from heavyweight hospitality groups, here’s what to check out.
The local hospitality industry continues to grapple with the hangover from inflation and the wild weather the city experienced through the end of summer and start of winter.
And yet, looking at the ledger at the end of 2025, there were still far more high-profile openings than there were closures.
Most of the news this year surrounded restaurants, with a bunch of groups – Fanda, Anyday, Coats, Tassis, Delia – unleashing new venues. But there were some curios from independent operators thrown into the mix. And the boozers, bakeries, brunch spots and cafes that joined them tended to be innovative and interesting, or in unique or untapped locations.
Here’s what you need to check out as we head towards 2026.
Bar Monte, Newstead
Bar Monte comes from Arcade Agency, the hospitality “collective” best known for Light Years, which originated in Byron Bay.
This is the second Bar Monte after the Gold Coast original, which opened in December 2024.
Bar Monte opened mid-September in the Longland Street tenancy previously occupied by Allonda.
The fit-out by Studio Plenty is moodier and more intimate and playful than its predecessor, with dark tiling and marble counters, timber panelling and clever feature lighting. The treatment is modern but nostalgic, and suits the restaurant’s slightly hidden location on the laneway that runs between Longland and Wyatt streets.
The menu is similar to the Miami original, with engaging twists on familiar Italian items, particularly when it comes to snacks and entrees. The pastas are all unctuous numbers that range from a cacio e pepe and prawn and chilli linguine, to mezze maniche served with pork sausage and Tuscan kale.
There’s also a short menu of mains that spruces up classics such as bistecca, veal cotoletta, and a diavola chicken.
For drinks, there’s a fun, savoury-focused cocktail menu (caprese martini, celery margarita, that kind of thing) and a 100(ish)-bottle wine list compiled by award-winning sommelier Andrea Martinisi that focuses on Australian, Italian and French drops.
Marlowe, South Brisbane
Fanda Group (Southside, Rick Shores, Central, Norte) has taken the old Merivale apartment building in South Brisbane and transformed it into this head-turning 110-seat restaurant.
Regular Fanda designer J.AR OFFICE has created an interior that’s fastidiously sympathetic to the character of the original two-level apartments. There are nine distinct dining and bar spaces, a greenery-lined terrace, and four enclosed sunrooms. Materials include walnut timber, polished chrome and rich carpets.
For food, chef Ollie Hansford taps into the restaurant’s built-in sense of place and nostalgia, sourcing some unique local producers to serve classic Australian and European dishes with a twist.
Much of the seafood coming out of the kitchen is sourced from a co-operative of line fishermen working the east coast and producers such as Cherax Park Aquaculture, north of Gympie.
On the main menu, there’s stuffed 20-week chicken breast from Joyce’s Gold Heritage Chicken with mushrooms and a sherry sauce, and a rotating butcher’s cut that utilises citrus-fed wagyu from Elbow Valley Beef, west of Brisbane.
Group beverage director Peter Marchant’s entirely Australian wine list (beyond its champagne) plays a similar gambit, calling upon both small and larger old-school producers, but in the case of the latter often reaching for their more distinctive older vintages.
Winnifred’s, Fortitude Valley
There’s a lot of Megan Nunn in Winnifred’s. Even the venue’s name is a reference to Nunn’s own grandmother, Winnifred Barrett.
Winnifred’s, which opened on Arthur Street in Fortitude Valley in early August, is also inspired by Nunn’s visits to the Champagne wine region when she was battling brain cancer. It was during these trips that she fell in love with the grower champagne that sits at the heart of Winnifred’s.
Winnifred’s taps into Australian drinkers’ burgeoning interest in grower champagne. The venue boasts 14,000 bottles in its cellar showcasing more than 360 cuvees from 60-plus growers and grands marque houses. There are also five champagnes available by the glass that will rotate regularly.
Beyond champagne, there’s a short menu of French wines, French-style beer by Northgate’s FICK Brewing and a small selection of cocktails.
For food, award-winning chef Antoine Potier (formerly head chef at E’cco and sous chef at Restaurant Dan Arnold) charged with creating a seasonal bistro menu that reflects the Champagne region.
The venue itself is split over two floors into different areas, with a lengthy green granite bar out front, the moodily lit 60-bistro with tanned leather banquettes out the back and a sizeable private dining room upstairs.
Lambkotsu Ramen, Underwood
Brisbane ramen pioneer Taro Akimoto’s of Taro’s Ramen fame has tackled something very different: a shop far in the city’s deep south, in Underwood, dedicated to a halal lamb take on traditional tonkotsu pork bone-broth ramen. It opened in November.
Lambkotsu Ramen is relatively tiny even by Taro’s standards, with just 15 seats, and it’s serving just four variations on lamb ramen: original with bay leaf and coriander seed oil, a red lamb ramen with Taro’s signature chilli and sweet miso oil, a black ramen with burnt garlic black oil, and a green lamb ramen with sweet pickle, basil and kale oil.
There are no sides, no beer (naturally, given the shop’s halal nature). For now, Akimoto wants to do one thing and do it well.
To make the ramen completely halal, Akimoto is currently using lamb shoulder sourced from Top Cut Butcher in Logan Central. He’s long been happy with his soup process but he needed to change the tare, or seasoning, to eliminate the sake – which took a lot of trial and error until he was happy with the results.
Akimoto is using the same housemade noodles that he tosses into his Taro’s ramen, but with turmeric and cumin added to the dough.
Otherwise, it’s smoked dashi kunsei nitamago for a big slug of umami, with fresh shallots, coriander and Szechuan pepper to balance out the richness.
Golden Avenue, CBD
From Anyday (Agnes, Honto, Bianca et al) comes Golden Avenue, which sees a return to Middle Eastern food for chef-owner Ben Williamson and group exec chef Adam Wolfers (both ex-Gerard’s, among many others).
Not that Golden Avenue, which opened in August, is anything like Gerard’s. “We wanted to bring a little more of that Levantine approach to the cuisine – clean flavours, clean smells,” Williamson said at the time.
Jared Webb’s J.AR OFFICE has designed a restaurant which, for the most part, is open-air and full of greenery. Its many nooks and spaces lend it a flexibility for different styles of dining. What strikes you most are the stacks of plants – Webb’s interpretation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Williamson, Wolfers and head chef Tim Yates (whose CV includes a stint as the opening head chef at Ramael Scully’s Scully restaurant in London) are using multiple wood-fired ovens and coal grills to prepare a menu that covers dips, hot and cold mezze, and items from the garden, oven and grill.
For drinks, there’s a 150-bottle wine list and cocktails powered by 130 spirits on the back bar at neighbouring boozer GA, which features its own snack menu.
Golden Avenue is the first opening in a larger hub of Anyday venues that will occupy the corner of Mary and Edward streets and incorporate the heritage-listed Coal Board Building.
So What Stereo, Fortitude Valley
Kawid “Meek” Brikshavana is best known for Mameek, which he opened in Hawthorne in 2022. It was while looking for a production kitchen for Mameek that he happened on the space for So What Stereo in front of The Valley Grocer in Fortitude Valley. It opened in July.
Walking into So What Stereo feels like stumbling into your rich mate’s ultimate retro rumpus room. It’s a fabulous space, full of found furniture, mid-century layered pendant lights and vintage UBL speakers. In a corner, there’s a stack of vinyl and compact discs, and two vintage turntables.
For food, So What Stereo is serving a Thai brunch and lunch menu anchored by dishes inspired, in particular, by Brikshavana’s native Lampang province in Thailand’s north.
Expect dishes such as Thai-style scramble with coal-grilled tiger prawns and nam prik num; Thai boat noodles; khao kai kon served with coal-grilled scotch fillet; crying tiger beef; and khao soi egg noodle soup that comes topped with braised chicken or beef.
For drinks, there’s Single O espresso and filter coffee, and chilled drinks such as iced coconut matcha, iced coconut espresso and the like.
Brikshavana says to expect the menu to change regularly, and the cafe to begin experimenting with dinner service.
Shaman, CBD
The theme at Peter Hollands’ (Frog’s Hollow, Alice Bar) Shaman is rum and tequila – there’s about 150 of them combined on the back bar – with a little bit of Carlos Santana thrown in for good measure.
The bar occupies a basement space beneath the heritage-listed former Metro Arts building on Edward Street (home to both Exhibition and Dr Gimlette). You enter down the old carriageway on the left of the building before descending downstairs and entering through a heavy timber door.
Inside, the building’s heavy original timber beams frame an intimate space with a semi-octagonal bar on one side of the venue and matching low-set octagonal tables on the other. Sealed original archways feature a variety of framed photography, the space lit by vintage petal lights.
Behind the bar, seasoned vets Tim Pope (ex-Par Bar in Melbourne) and Ed Quatermass (Maker, Death & Taxes et al) are in charge of a tight drinks list that features three house-takes on the staples – a daiquiri, a margarita prepped with house-made triple sec, and an old-fashioned; a rotating list of old-school, more obscure classics; and a third section that’s designed to celebrate forgotten retro gems (a bracing pina colada currently features).
There’s a short list of mostly South American wines, and just one beer, Estrella, bottles of which sit iced up behind the bar in specially imported crates.
Clarence, South Brisbane
Ben McShane and Matt Kuhnemann’s new 60-seat take on Clarence in Fish Lane, in a ground floor tenancy of the Cremorne apartment building, is a fetching, Alkot Studio-designed eatery, decked out in ribbed timber, globe pendents, green and white tiled walls, and green upholstered banquettes and seating.
It’s a major upgrade on the original Clarence in the old Shop Row building on Stanley Street in Woolloongabba.
Longtime fans of the restaurant can expect a little more permanence on the restaurant’s menu, although it will still evolve by the seasons.
Expect dishes such as Nashville-seasoned tropical rock lobster with pickles and white bread, Jerusalem artichokes with a sunflower miso cream and yuzu, gnocchi served with caviar and a dashi cream, wild caught barramundi with dill-pickle butter and carrots, and dry-aged duck with witlof and a cumquat yuzu kosho.
Wines are still all Australian, with a list that now runs close to 100 bottles.
Landing Bakery, Scarborough
Tom Cooney (Riser Bread) opened Landing Bakery in August with long-time business partner (since Anytime, recently sold) Jack Wakefield.
It occupies a light and bright modern space designed by Five Mile Radius and Matthew Reynolds that features handsome pale-timber communal tables, and pigmented sand-cast and concrete furnishings (intended to reflect the red cliffs of the area).
For food, head baker Dan Smyth is producing almond croissants, pain au chocolat, morning buns and gochujang scrolls. Later in the day a clutch of sandwiches – a chicken salad, a Reuben (prepared with house-made pastrami), roasted vegetable and hummus, and a porchetta roll – come on-stream.
Like Riser, there’s a range of bread (plain or seeded sourdough, a country loaf and a focaccia) and an abbreviated selection of pantry staples on a shelf at the front door – jarred pickles, beetroot ketchup, smoked ketchup, tomato relish and bags of Fox coffee, which has also produced Landing’s house coffee blend.
Idle, New Farm
In June, Agnes Bakery closed on James Street and shifted down to New Farm to transform into Idle.
Anyday’s beautiful bakery-led cafe is organised around an indoor service area designed by Tamsin Johnson, best known locally for her work on Raes on Watego and the Sir boutique on James Street.
She’s given the venue a light and bright treatment, with plenty of stainless-steel and custom terrazzo, the standout feature some Italian futurist light fittings.
Idle serves everything regulars have become accustomed to at Agnes Bakery – fire-licked sourdough loaves, Basque cheesecakes, caneles, kouign-amanns and so on – but also a relatively expansive brunch menu.
From 11am, free-range charcoal chicken, fries, and daily salads and sandwiches are added to the mix.
Idle serves specialty coffee by Single O, and shelving on the back wall stocks a bunch of pantry items, including house-made granola, condiments and fancy Torres potato chips from Spain, and wine.
Layla, West End
Shane Delia’s Layla is set inside the heritage-listed end of the Thomas Dixon Centre.
Melbourne-based architecture firm Studio Y has lent the restaurant a moody, dramatic interior, with the space’s original 1908-built brick walls (replete with graffiti) complemented by lavish, tactile materials such as blue velvet upholstery, walnut timber, brass accents and blue terrazzo flooring.
Delia is known for his Middle Eastern food at his celebrated Melbourne venues, but Layla takes a slightly different tack by introducing influences from traditional spice trade routes, and in particular the Indian subcontinent.
Expect dishes such as Brisbane Valley quail with pistachio crust, served with a fiery tahini tarator; and Turkish beef dumplings with a mushroom XO, sujuk, yoghurt and spiced burnt butter.
Larger plates includes a ras el hanout-spiced “Habibbi” butter chicken; an eight-hour slow-cooked lamb shoulder with smoked eggplant, roast lemon and za’atar sauce; and a coal-grilled swordfish T-bone with burnt orange and saffron.
For drinks there’s a seasonal cocktail list and a globe-trotting 150-bottle wine list.
Dark Blue, Fortitude Valley
The follow-up to Hannah Wagner’s popular Dark Red wine bar is located across Ann Street in Winn Lane.
Slotted into the bottom of the heritage-listed Shannon’s Building, Wagner describes Dark Blue as having the feel of a New York loft, with the venue featuring high ceilings, and original timber and brick features.
A small bar sits at one end opposite a mix of high and low seating overlooking Winn Street. Above sits a vintage chandelier and a small mezzanine.
Dark Blue leans a bit more towards cocktails than its sister venue, and for wines Wagner is focusing on drops from Spain, Chile and Argentina, with the initial list running to around 50 bottles.
There are also snacks such as tinned sardines and octopus, Superbon Madrid crisps, and deli boards you can compile yourself with items such as a terrine and a cherry duck pâté.
The bar has just 30 seats, so get there early if you want to nab a spot.
Donnie’s, Teneriffe
Jackson McLoughlin and Nickolas Kruckel’s tidy little pizza restaurant opened on Vernon Terrace in April and has been doing buzzy trade ever since, locals drawn by the promise of NYC-style pizza as well as snacks and charcuterie.
With the help of celebrated UK pizza chef Alim Nayil, McLoughlin and Kruckel developed a menu of eight pizzas, roughly between 11 and 12 inches in diameter, all baked in the same PizzaMaster deck oven that’s popular in US pizza shops.
You might order the Gabagool (tomato meatball ragu, capicola, mozzarella, whipped ricotta and basil), the ’Nduja (tomato, ’nduja, hot honey, fior di latte, mozzarella, whipped ricotta, basil) or the Vodka (vodka sauce, burrata, mozzarella, parmesan and basil).
The pizzas are complemented by snacks, cocktails and a tight 20(ish)-bottle wine list that skews towards Australian indie growers.
The restaurant’s fitout in one of the heritage woolstore buildings is relatively straightforward but a nice switch-up from former tenants Siffredi’s.
McLoughlin’s carpenter father travelled from Canberra to help produce a fetching little venue of timber counter tops, and brick and tile features.
Penelope, Fortitude Valley
If you’ve walked down James Street and wondered about the colour and shapes that swell and shift beyond Penelope’s fluted glass then, congratulations, that’s exactly how Coats Group intended it. This clever new bistro sticks out on the strip precisely because, on first impression, it looks like it’s trying not to.
Z Architects was charged with capturing the feel of a 1960s or ’70s European supper club, with timber wall panelling, marble counters, large pendant lights and heavy drapery.
For food, there’s a relatively straightforward menu that’s split into house-made charcuterie, snacks, small plates and mains.
Think bistro classics such as vodka pasta, steak frites and beef tartare, but often with an imaginative touch-up.
Similarly, the drinks are kept tight, with twisted classic cocktails – including a Martini menu – and a 100-bottle wine list that favours European drops.
LPO, Tarragindi
Comedian and actor Matt Okine is one of the owners of LPO. Partnering with him is Dan Wilson, a seasoned chef who, pre-pandemic, ran kitchens and opened his own venue, Dandy, in London.
LPO is short for “Local Post Office” after Okine and his wife, Belinda Rabe, found an old post office for rent on Windmill Street.
Rabe took care of much of the design, adding a teal timber-panelled frontage that captures the feel of a French wine bar or cafe.
Inside, it’s ply walls, timber shelves for the 250-ish vintages now on display (Wilson and Okine are hoping long-term to push it up to 300), polished concrete floors, and potted plants to add a bucolic touch. In the middle of the space, there’s a communal table designed to let guests interact with each other.
The focus with the wine is on minimum intervention drops with a roughly 60-40 split between international and Australian producers, Wilson leaning on deep connections both in Australia and abroad to source some heady drops.
LPO’s licence means there’s a rotating selection of four white wines and four reds by the glass. And there’s a focus on keeping things affordable, with some bottles going for less than $20.
The Fifty Six, CBD
The Fifty Six is DAP & Co’s (Walter’s Steakhouse, Popolo, The Gresham) beautiful Cantonese restaurant, which opened in February atop the refurbished Naldham House in Brisbane’s CBD.
Regular DAP & Co designer Anna Spiro has lent The Fifty Six’s dining room a considered modern opulence.
It’s defined by imposing velvet banquettes, turquoise glass table tops, and a line of spacious booths down one side of the space – a treatment that contrasts cleverly with the arched heritage windows, with their views across the surrounding trees, office towers and the river.
For food, chef Gerald Ong has split the menu into small bites and dim sum (Ong has brought dim sum master Ka Wai Kwok with him from Canberra); cold and hot entrees; and mains, roasts, vegetable dishes, and rice and noodles. Expect dishes such as Bangalow pork xiao long bao; Hong Kong-style Murray cod with fragrant soy, ginger and scallions; and claypot Queensland mudcrab with vermicelli, chicken fat and aged shaoxing.
For drinks, there’s a cocktail section that remixes the classics, and an extensive wine list – compiled by sommeliers Xiangyu Jie and Marcel Thomson – that’s stacked with drops that converse with the spice and flavour of Ong’s food.
Stilts and Mulga Bill’s, CBD
This Tassis Group two-hander opened in conjunction with the Kangaroo Point Bridge – Mulga Bill’s at the CBD end and Stilts on the bridge itself.
Stilts is 100-seater that sits a level above the bridge’s walkway, according it cracking 270-degree views of the river, the Kangaroo Point Cliffs and the Botanic Gardens.
Go-to Tassis designer firm Clui responded by dialling down its more lavish tendencies for a fit-out that plays second fiddle to the scenery.
The food is intended to be a reflection of place, owner Michael Tassis describing Stilts as a steak and seafood restaurant but “modern” and “more elevated” than other restaurants from the group in a similar vein, such as Fatcow and Rich & Rare.
The food is accompanied by a 165-bottle wine list.
Mulga Bills, on the other hand, is a perfectly pitched all day diner, that kicks off in the morning with dishes such as woodfired eggs with kefalograviera cheese, sausage and red sauce, smoked salmon on sourdough with whipped Danish feta and baby capers, and a breakfast pizza cooked in an imported Moretti Forni oven; before a snacks and large plates menu takes over in the afternoon and evening.
The venue itself is an open-air number with skylights bathing the dining room with natural light, and plush mustard booths and timber furniture that match the tree-lined riverside views through its open bifold windows.
Also worth a look…
Dopo Eatery – Classic Milton cafe Togninis gets a light and bright new identity.
Grand View Hotel – a bayside icon finally reopens, and it’s all change out back.
Birria Boy – a young gun chef creates a terrific take on birria tacos.
Above – the Valley scores and intimate rooftop bar.
Naga Thai – a cherished pandemic-era pop-up finally gets a permanent home at South Bank.
Queen Amann – a slick dedicated to kouign-amann opens on King Street.
Landers Pocket – a monster 800-seat brewpub lands near the airport, with 4 Pines on tap and an on-site Never Never gin distillery.
Summit Restaurant – The Mount Coot-tha icon is reborn with a star chef onboard.
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
