Regulars can expect all the fire-licked breads and pastries they’ve become accustomed to queueing for, but also a full-service cafe menu featuring elevated brunch items.
On a Sunday earlier this month, Ben Williamson and Tyron Simon sat on a patch of grass and looked across James Street.
It was Agnes Bakery’s final day of trade.
“I brought the kids and the family and the dogs down, and then Ty came down and we got a couple of pastries and a coffee and sat and just looked at it,” Williamson says.
Until that moment, the celebrated chef hadn’t considered what the closure of Agnes Bakery meant to him and what came to be known as Anyday, the restaurant group he co-owns with Simon, Bianca Marchi and Frank Li.
“We started talking about it and it all kind of hit me,” Williamson says. “‘Man, what a journey to get to this point.’ ”
Agnes Bakery started as a hail Mary – an unfettered dice roll in the face of a global pandemic. This was back in the final week of March in 2020 in the Spring Hill premises of Agnes the restaurant, which had been due to open the same week.
Seemingly against the odds, it was a hit, with locked-down punters queueing around the block for wood-fired bread and pastries (and perhaps a little human interaction outside of their own four walls).
When lockdown restrictions eased and the group geared up to open Agnes as a restaurant, it made sense to move the bakery to its own space on the corner of James and Harcourt streets. There, it established itself as a local favourite, with the lines this time stretching down the hill towards The Calile hotel.
In the meantime, Williamson, Simon, Li and Marchi had opened Bianca on Ada Lane, opposite The Calile, which became another roaring success, and then went on to formalise their identity as Anyday.
So the word “journey” feels appropriate.
When Agnes Bakery wrapped at the end of that Sunday, the staff would begin the process of packing down and migrating over to Merthyr Road in New Farm to Idle, its full-service successor, which opened last weekend.
Which makes you wonder: why call time on this little bakery (or brand, perhaps) that could, which has come to mean so much to so many people, not least of all Williamson, Simon, Li and Marchi themselves?
“It had sort of become its own thing anyway,” Williamson says. “Especially when Mitch [Suchowacki] came on board as head baker. It really started to evolve.
“It was like this little sibling constantly living in the shadow of Agnes [the restaurant], which had become such a beast of its own that it didn’t make sense anymore to keep them connected. So this was a great opportunity for us to give it its own identity.”
If the closure of Agnes Bakery is the end of one chapter, Idle is the start of another.
Later this year, Anyday will open a clutch of venues in the heritage-listed Coal Board Building in the guts of Brisbane’s CBD. It will be the group’s most ambitious project yet.
In that sense, Idle feels like something of a test run. When this masthead visits on a busy Tuesday morning, Williamson, Simon and Marchi are all there, overseeing service, and running food to the al fresco tables lined along Merthyr Road and up a brick-lined side lane.
The tables are gathered 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. It feels sleek and modern without drifting into the austere.
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 designed by Williamson Suchowacki.
There are your usual cafe go-tos given an Idle twist: sourdough crumpets with creme fraiche and a berry compote, porridge with white miso, cinnamon poached quince, coconut and walnut, and a bacon and fried egg roll with waffle fries and relish.
“We started talking about it and it all kind of hit me: ‘Man, what a journey to get to this point.’ ”
Idle co-owner Ben Williamson
But there’s also more elevated dishes such as Baghdad eggs with a cumin burnt butter, smoked almond, a flaky flatbread and mint; a steamed spanner crab omelette with chilli, choron (a tomato-spiked bearnaise), salmon roe and toast; and a continental-style breakfast with ham, asiago, house-made butter, and a cucumber and fennel pickle, served with a baguette and soft-boiled egg.
It’s all about as thoughtful as you’d expect from Anyday, and 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.
Beyond its meaning for Anyday, Idle is a welcome addition in New Farm and Brisbane, where full-service cafe openings have become increasingly rare in the post-pandemic age.
“We’ve had a lot of Agnes Bakery clientele coming down, but also a lot of locals, who are often people in their 50s and 60s,” Williamson says. “We thought it might be a challenge to get some of [them] across the line, but they’ve responded well. It’s been really great.”
Open daily 7am-2pm.
84 Merthyr Road, New Farm, 07 3062 2346, anyday.com.au
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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.
