Brisbane restaurant: Port Office Hotel review

Nine months after fire tore through this heritage-listed Brisbane pub it’s back with an offering that shames most of the others in town, says reviewer Tony Harper.

Calves liver once frightened me as much as tetanus injections and those bits of dog business that regularly wedged under my school shoes.

My grandmother cooked it like it was made from concrete and it ended up much the same … grey, desert-dry and totally inedible.

Years later my mother turned things around with slightly pink, bouncy, moist renditions that in the end made me love offal of all shapes and sizes. Which I still do.

And there on the Port Office Hotel menu is a dish of calves liver and another of sweetbreads. Happy, happy days.

Port Office Hotel, Brisbane city. Spring 2019 menu. Pics by David Kelly. For Brisbane News restaurant page. SUPPLIED PICS

The Port Office rendition ($26) is spot-on; just-pink, tender, served with broccolini, wee bits of diced bacon, devilled sauce and sweet-potato clapshot — it’s all quite British/Scottish, and not fussy or fiddled … merely well crafted.

It’s a big serve and I can’t do it justice but eating it is a cathartic experience; it washes away my culinary pretensions with its simple, grounded precision.

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Across the table is a rotisserie half-chook ($29, sourced from the Glass House Mountains) with a little pot of really good gravy, some cos-based salad and fries with truffled mayo.

The fries hardly get touched because we are on the chicken like a couple of hungry foxes. It’s terrific. Again simple, but done so, so well.

The Port Office Hotel wagyu burger with tomato, Swiss cheese, cos, pickles, onion jam, club sauce and fries.

It’s apparent that a fair bit of thought has been spent on the menu and it has plenty of crowd-pleasers.

There are five steaks, lamb cutlets, duck breast ($36), bangers and mash (with Cumberland sausages no less) and plenty of seafood — chowder, bouillabaisse, fish and chips, scallops, calamari, bugs and a very, very tasty plate of WA Scampi with a Thai accented (Kaffir lime and ginger) beurre blanc with a little Asian salad ($34).

And then there are the bits of offal and a few slightly more eclectic bits and bobs.

It toys with all sorts of food cultures, at times putting more than one on the same plate. But not without thought.

It’s top-notch bistro fare with just enough quirk to keep things interesting.

The Port Office has been closed since January after a kitchen fire, and the dining room has been freshened up in a forced revamp. And, as always, the service is spot-on.

Firefighter battling the blaze at Brisbane's Port Office Hotel. Wednesday January 23, 2019. Picture: AAP/John Gass

There’s a solid wine list that has a very good collection of bottles from all parts of the globe and covering every pricepoint from $30 to several hundred.

There’s some interesting stuff to be found — several barolos, Gruner Veltliner, a few cracking Queensland wines, burgundy (both red and white), Bordeaux and all sorts of other goodies.

Duck breast with pumpkin and vanilla puree, beets and jus at the Port Office Hotel.

I’d love to see a few more interesting wines on the glass list, and a better collection of beers. Even so, it has to be one of the best drinks list in a Brisbane pub.

And that is the crux: the Port Office is a pub with an offering that shames most of the others in town. I can’t think of another with the same imagination, thought and polish across the board.

SCORES OUT OF 10

Food: 8

Drinks: 7.5

Service: 8

Vibe: 8

PORT OFFICE HOTEL

40 Edward St, city

Ph: 3210 6016

Chef: Graham Waddell