The new restaurant embraces its riverside locale with a greater focus on seafood, and wines to match (with more bottles thrown in for the high rollers too).
The first thing you need to know about the new Black Hide is that it isn’t black. Not even close.
Gone are the dark and moody vibes of its Treasury Brisbane iteration, replaced by a lighter, brighter treatment courtesy of regular Gambaro designer Lisa Henderson of S.SHYNE. Light timber, cream curtains and lengthy aquamarine banquettes are all designed to reflect the new restaurant’s prime position at Queen’s Wharf overlooking the Brisbane River and South Bank beyond.
Where Black Hide at The Treasury felt like a place for secret date nights and business bro confabs, the sprawling 250-seat Black Hide Queen’s Wharf is more for sunny lunches and lengthy group dinners.
“This aspect really warranted us going into brighter, more vibrant colours,” says Frank Gambaro, who co-owns Black Hide and the iconic Gambaro Seafood Restaurant on Caxton Street with brothers John and Donny. “We need to be going with the flow and moving with what Brisbane’s offering, also.
“That moody style still has a place. We still have the Black Hide flagship on Caxton Street, and we will never lose its fantastic location.
“But also, we’ve gone from just steak to steak and seafood … introducing seafood to the menu is the next step in growing this brand.”
It’s true. Black Hide’s menu now taps a wider variety of seafood, which perhaps explains the “Steak and Seafood, by Gambaro” that’s been added onto its full title; this place could easily be a Gambaro seafood restaurant rather than a Black Hide restaurant.
For entrees, you can order tuna tartare served on a rice cracker with umeboshi dressing; grilled scallops with garlic, parsley butter and pangrattato; and tuna tataki with wakame and shiitake mushrooms.
On the mains there’s chargrilled squid with tomato, escabeche and zucchini; a lobster linguini with tomato, parsley and lemon zest; grilled Mooloolaba prawns with a parsley and garlic butter and lemon; and lobster from the tank grilled or poached with a lemon herb and garlic butter. There’s also a cold seafood platter that includes prawns, Moreton Bay bug, natural oysters and tuna tartare.
Still, steak is ultimately the hero here, cooked on a double parrilla grill that takes centre stage in an open kitchen with low-set bench tops.
Markus Ravik
The menu is refreshingly straightforward, split into a selection of Angus three-score cuts and Wagyu five-score cuts. The former tops out with a 1200-gram tomahawk at $240 (designed to feed up to three people), the latter a 300-gram rib eye for $98. There’s also a nine-score 200-gram Wagyu eye fillet that will set you back $155. All come with a choice of red wine jus, mushroom-pepper sauce, bearnaise, chimichurri or garlic and parsley butter (for no extra charge – again, refreshing).
Away from steak and seafood there are dishes such as chargrilled spatchcock with olives and semi-dried tomato herbs, and a warrigal green, zucchini, tomato and basil casarecce.
For drinks, there’s a fine-tuned wine list to better accommodate the seafood, with more reserve bottles added to attract the high rollers arriving from the casino upstairs. There’s also a refreshed short cocktail list that mixes signatures with twists on the classics.
The new Black Hide is one of the first restaurants to open at Queen’s Wharf and has been capping its bookings at 100 diners a service for its first days in operation, to better allow the team to find its feet, but Gambaro says the response to the new eatery has been positive.
“[You do feel that pressure] but that’s why we’re not allowing any more than 100 bookings,” he says. “We need to get it right.
“But we’re blessed [to be open early]. We’ve got that opportunity to work through all those little things.”
Hours Tue-Thu 11.30am-10pm, Fri-Sat 11.30am-11.30pm, Sun 11.30am-9pm
The Star Brisbane, Level 4/33 William Street, Brisbane, (07) 3505 7422
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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.
