The local food scene faced numerous challenges at the start of the year before flexing its muscles in all sorts of ways – some good, some not so good.
Chat with many restaurateurs around town right now and they’ll tell you they’re looking at bumper summer bookings. Which is a relief after the year they had.
From the outside, Brisbane’s food scene looks in rude health. Travel to Melbourne, talk to the post-COVID walking wounded in that city, and they’ll express envy at what they’re witnessing north of the Queensland-NSW border.
But the reality on the inside is always a bit different, and our metro city is little more than half the size of Melbourne and Sydney, meaning its food scene is arguably more prone to the vagaries of the economy, consumer habits and natural disasters.
Brisbane seemed to cop it all in 2025.
The start of the year was marked by the hangover from years of high inflation and associated high interest rates. Then came ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred in March, which for many restaurateurs extended the traditionally quiet months of January and February. Baja Modern Mexican owner Dan Quinn estimated at the time that Alfred (and the storm’s frustratingly late arrival) would wipe out close to two weeks of revenue.
“It’s huge to try and get that back,” Quinn said.
Alfred was followed by record-breaking autumn rains and an unusually wet start to winter. By June, local operators could’ve been forgiven for wondering what was next – “one uppercut after another” is how one restaurateur described the year up to that point – and this was on top of all the usual pressures of high rents and escalating food costs.
Little wonder we witnessed a bunch of closures this year.
With Gum Bistro and Pneuma, Brisbane lost two of its most exciting new restaurants. Elsewhere, party izakaya-inspired Goros lasted barely six months, Happy Fat wound down classic burger joint Red Hook to focus on other projects, Lion elected to close its Valley Stone & Wood brewpub, and New Farm bolthole Gerties announced it will call time in the new year. Among the morning crowd, Choquette, Supernova and the iconic King Arthur Cafe all pulled up stumps.
Still, the bad news was drowned out by the good, with the usual cavalcade of openings dominating the news cycle. Here, there are a few interesting trends to unpick.
CBD dining and drinking is the obvious one. The city welcomed blockbuster openings such as The Fifty Six atop Naldham House, and powerhouse group Anyday unveiled Golden Avenue and The French Exit a block away on the corner of Edward and Mary streets.
The late 2024 opening of Kangaroo Point Bridge was followed by Tassis Group’s Stilts and Mulga Bill’s. Just up Edward Street was Shaman, from Frog’s Hollow and Alice’s Peter Hollands, and the old Pneuma space was quickly snapped up by La Cache a Vin’s Romain Maunier to create Little Provence.
They joined other relatively recent arrivals such as Central, Naldham House Brasserie, Supernormal, Milquetoast, and the slew of late-2024 venue openings at Queen’s Wharf, to double down on the quest to enliven Brisbane CBD’s nighttime economy.
The question remains, though: what else is this movement built on other than restaurants and bars? Brisbane has late-night shopping in the city just one night a week, and all the theatres moved out long ago. A human being’s soul isn’t nurtured by food and booze alone, after all, even if all these venues are good enough to survive, regardless.
There was plenty of action outside the city too.
James Street and the Valley saw the arrival of slick supper club Penelope, champagne mecca Winnifred’s, legit Thai cafe So What Stereo, and wine bar Dark Blue, a follow-up to owner Hannah Wagner’s popular Dark Red.
In Newstead, Byron Bay-based Arcade Agency – best known for the enormously popular Light Years – opened a second instalment of its Bar Monte Italian concept, and Harry Ohayon and Maxime Bournazel’s Rise Bakery at Breakfast Creek has just begun opening late for dinner.
Meanwhile, in South Brisbane, Naga Thai landed a permanent home at South Bank, and Fanda unveiled Marlowe in a beautiful heritage-listed former apartment block in Fish Lane, with Ben McShane and Matt Kuhnemann opening a new take on their ultra-seasonal Clarence eatery next door.
If you’ve read this far, you might’ve noticed another of the major trends of 2025: the unmistakable presence of restaurant groups in this year’s openings. Here, it feels like Brisbane is approaching an inflection point. Will we follow the lead of Sydney, which is dominated by large hospitality groups, in particular Merivale, which has more than 90 venues across that city?
The economies of scale and scope that a restaurant group affords make sense in the modern environment, where margins have never been tighter. But it also raises concerns about homogenisation and the further squeezing of independents, who struggle to compete for staff and deals on real estate.
Either way, Brisbane’s groups are flexing – sometimes with mixed results.
Ghanem Group took on Melbourne this year, opening a Blackbird in Flinders Lane. The review from Good Food’s Besha Rodell was far from glowing. There’s an argument that Blackbird is the wrong concept for that city, although I’d also wager Ghanem is good enough and care enough to right that ship, at least somewhat.
Others are using their outsized influence to even put pressure on food media to better control their image – something this masthead has experienced, and pushed back on.
So where does that leave those independents? It’s a question with a few different answers, but one easy one is, further away from the city.
Many of our most memorable food and drink experiences this year were in Brisbane’s rolling suburbs and beyond, whether at Matt Okine and Dan Wilson’s LPO Neighbourhood Wine Store in Tarragindi, or Tom Cooney and Jack Wakefield’s Landing bakery in Scarborough, or Fatty Patty in Underwood.
It’s not brand new, but we ate some of the best charcoal chicken of our lives at Sizzling Birds in Upper Mount Gravatt, and owner Kesra Sefian put us onto shawarma better than anything he says he ate growing up in Sydney at Zooroona (Gerard’s Johnny Moubarak is also a card-carrying fan of this place), also in Underwood.
What’s more, our readership responded to these stories, indicating an interest in discovering for themselves these precious suburban gems. And that, perhaps as much as anything – despite all the concerns over groups and costs and sluggish consumer behaviour – is a sign of a healthier, more well-rounded, Brisbane food scene.
Bring on 2026.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Sign up
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.
