Freshly baked bread? Check. Brined chicken? Check. Umami packed dressing? Check. There’s just so much to love about this fabulous creation.
Tom Cooney will tell you Riser has and always will be a team effort.
“The staff at Riser are such a big part of what we do,” Cooney says.
“It’s not really a pyramid, top-down structure. Maybe it would be different if it was chef-owned. But we’re excited to have people bring their ideas in to work on.
“It’s definitely the sum of all its parts.”
The philosophy neatly extends to the main reason (among, it must be said, a bunch of supplementary ones) to check out this Toowong bakery and cafe: its chicken caesar sandwich. Because this is one of the very best chook sangers in the city. Seriously.
More about the sandwich in a second.
But first, let’s talk about Riser
Riser is the creation of Cooney, Kieran Ryan and Duncan McKay, who between them have run, worked, baked at or owned Cup Specialty Roasters, Coffee Supreme, Banneton, The Scratch and Netherworld, among others.
They opened Riser in late 2022 in the storied Queenslander-style shopfront formerly occupied by 85 Miskin Street, and before that Bruno Loubet’s iconic Bruno’s Tables.
From the outside, it looks much the same as its suburban restaurant days, but inside it’s transformed, the old ground-floor dining room occupied by an expanded open kitchen and concrete counter and display box.
On weekends, it’s the scene of orderly chaos as customers queue around the timber floor and out the door under a shaded patio.
What are they queueing for?
Precisely baked danishes, croissants, scrolls and sausage rolls, sure, but also a fabulous chicken caesar sandwich stacked with flavour.
Riser’s chicken caesar sandwich
As mentioned, the chicken caesar sanger at Riser is a team effort that’s been iterated on at least twice since it was first created (with input from Cooney, Ryan and McKay) by the venue’s original chef, Amos Ilett.
Arguably, though, the killer move was the addition of croutons, which was Cooney’s idea. Along with the flecks of bacon, it adds a welcome textural element to the sandwich, and illustrates from the first bite how much thought has gone into this thing.
Any carb-on-carb crime is avoided via the sourdough sandwich bread — baked fresh on site and lent a touch more oil than your typical loaf, it’s about as soft as sourdough gets without losing its structure.
“Amos was our first sandwich guy and he was really excited about the chicken caesar, and it was instantly awesome,” Cooney says.
“But I said, ‘Look, I think it needs more crunch.’ And he, being an open-minded, wonderful chef, decided that bread on bread wasn’t the end of the world and that he’d give it a go, and once he did we were all excited about the outcome.”
The rest of the sandwich is pretty straightforward: chicken thigh, mesclun (rather than cos lettuce), house-pickled onions, house-made caesar dressing with dill, and a firm wipe of butter on the bread to head off any sogginess.
Still, there are neat tweaks under the hood, this time courtesy of current chef Gabriel Escalante-Gafau.
“Gabriel said, ‘I want to brine my chicken so it’s just going to be slightly more tender than before,’” Cooney says. “And then he added a little bit more punch to the dressing by upping the anchovy and the parmesan side of things.”
The brined thigh is full of flavour and softer than the breast you’ll find in most sangers, while the extra parmesan and anchovy Escalante-Gafau has added to the dressing kicks up the umami quotient.
We talk a lot about chef-made sandwiches on Sandwich Watch, and Riser’s chicken caesar sanger eats like one, with a flavour profile that’s strident but balanced. No wonder it’s a bestseller, with a third of its five sandwiches sold every week (out of four regulars and a weekly special) a chicken caesar.
Where to get it
Riser’s chicken caesar sandwich is $16. You can get one at 85 Miskin Street, Toowong. Maybe avoid peak hour on the weekends.
Visiting during the week? The play is to take away to Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, drive into the park up to the secluded back lake and enjoy your lunch in the company of the inquisitive bush turkeys.
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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.
