Kitchen Confidential: The Qld country town in the midst of restaurant boom

It’s home to Queensland’s best regional restaurant, now this town an hour outside of Brisbane is set to become a foodie mecca.

Rural Queensland town Boonah is preparing for a culinary boom, with the team behind the area’s award-winning restaurant Blume set to open a second venue in the region.

Talented chef and Blume owner Jack Stuart has taken over the old Fassifern Sports Club/Boonah Bowls Club and has teamed up with Boonah local and marketing guru Emily Lochran to turn it into a smart-casual dining and event space.

The Bowl, as it will be called, will take classic sports club food and elevate it, ditching the typical frozen ingredients for the best of local produce from the celebrated Scenic Rim.

Jack Stuart and Emily Lochran will open The Bowl in Boonah.

“It will be that Italian approach of using food from an area and letting the produce speak for itself … simple and ­delicious,” Stuart said.

The chef is currently recruiting for the kitchen team, which will be serving up the likes of handmade pastas, freshly crumbed pork schnitzels using pigs from nearby Tommerup Farm, free-range chicken liver parfait, poached rainbow trout and Beaudesert crayfish and potato brioche rolls. A pizza oven will also be installed in a few months to turn out a rotating range of five wood-fired pizzas.

As well as heroing local ingredients, the venue wants to put a spotlight on local booze too, with Brisbane’s Aether Brewing creating a house lager, while there will be Witches Falls wines and cider from the Scenic Rim and a line-up of other great Aussie drops.

To accommodate the new offering, the venue is undergoing a complete refurb, introducing a fresh farmhouse style in shades of green and white with VJ walls, polished timber floors and brass touches.

An artist’s impression of The Bowl in Boonah.

There will be an indoor dining area, bar, lounge and private dining room for 14, as well as outdoor dining overlooking the bowling greens, with one green open for social bowls and croquet and the other for functions, parties and farmers markets that will begin in autumn selling wares from local growers and producers.

“The space is superb and there’s nothing really family friendly around here,” Lochran said.

The duo is also considering offering a courtesy bus from Brisbane to allow visitors to head out for a day trip, which could come in handy with a number of other high profile Brisbane restaurateurs considering opening up everything from wine bars to cafes in the region.

The Bowl is set to open at the end of next month.

BABYLON COMES TO BRISBANE

Stage one of glam new riverfront restaurant and bar Babylon Brisbane will launch this week in the CBD, promising Mediterranean-meets-Middle Eastern dining.

Based on the Sydney venue of the same name from the Mantle Group, the dining and drinking destination will be split over three levels, cascading down from Eagle St to the Brisbane River.

Opening Wednesday will be the whopping 400sq m, 120-seat restaurant serving Levantine dishes cooked over wood and charcoal on a custom-built, 3m-long Turkish grill and two rotisseries. Think the likes of wood-fired pumpkin kebabs or spiced fried cauliflower, wood-grilled squid with muhammara yoghurt or wood-fired chicken skewers. There’ll also be a $75pp nine-course banquet, with all food designed to be paired with signature Middle Eastern-inspired cocktails, as well as a mostly Australian wine list with 17 drops available by the glass.

The private dining room for 14 will also open this week, while the final stage of the venue, which includes two levels of outdoor bars, will open early next year.

SLICK NEW VALLEY WATERING HOLE

Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley will welcome a sleek and sophisticated new bar from the team behind coveted contemporary restaurant Essa.

The Nixon Room will move in alongside Essa, just off James St in Robertson St, and is the work of entrepreneur Angela Sclavos and chef Phil Marchant.

Essa head chef Phil Marchant along with Angela Sclavos will launch new Fortitude Valley bar The Nixon Room. Picture: Jeff Camden

While the team is keeping quiet on the details of the new venue, they can reveal that the space, entered through a fern-lined alley, will combine mid-century aesthetics with nods to great American bars, courtesy of architect Craig Channon from UME Architecture and creative director Borhan Ghofrani.

As for the drinks list, it will be a collection of the classics reimagined, matched with a menu of elevated bite-sized snacks based on familiar culinary favourites.

The Nixon Room is pencilled to open in January.

Kitchen Confidential will bring you more details closer to the date.