Caxton Hotel to reopen for dine-in and takeaway from Wednesday

One of Brisbane’s favourite pubs is set to reopen for dine-in from Wednesday while a seperate company which run dozens of other pubs across Queensland has hinted at when they plan to follow suit.

POTS and parmies are back on the menu as the iconic Caxton Hotel becomes one of the first Brisbane pubs to reopen from Wednesday.

Director Ross Farquhar said his staff were thrilled to start serving customers again after weeks of cleaning and maintenance.

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“All they’ve been doing is scrubbing and cleaning and moving chairs and taking chewing gum off from under tiles, we had chefs doing tiling,” he said.

“Most of our bookings are all for 10 people so it’s not going to be too complicated, a lot of people booked in for 10 people for two hours.

“It’s a bit like Good Friday, where you can go and eat and you can have a few drinks but you’ve got to have it with a meal, you can’t drink at the bar and it’s all table service.”

Melissa Anderson and Erin Cuskelly at The Caxton Hotel. Picture: AAP/Josh Woning

Mr Farquhar said it was a relief to be moving towards normalcy but that the 10 person limit was still economically “impractical” for pubs.

“20 is probably not enough either,” he said.

A spokesman for ALH, who own the Breakfast Creek Hotel, the Victory Hotel and dozens of Queensland taverns, said it is not finically viable to open while only 10 customers were allowed on premise at one time.

“We’re hopeful, depending on the numbers that we are allowed on premise, that we could potentially open more of our properties under phase two,” he said.

The Normanby Hotel and Riverbar also remain closed.

Mr Farquhar said he understood why a lot of other bigger pubs won’t be reopening during phase one.

“We cleaned up and thought it was an opportunity to get one kitchen going and hopefully lead into stage two,” he said.

“If it wasn’t leading to other stages I doubt we would have done it, but hopefully we can get a whole lot of systems that we know work and will work when the crowds get bigger.

“When they start having football again and Suncorp Stadium is filled with crowds again then we’ll get a real smile on our face.”