Is this the best cornbread in Queensland?

If you’re a lover of the semisweet, American, cake-like bread, you’ll want to drop everything and race to this Gold Coast eatery.

I love cornbread. In fact, I’m a little obsessed with it. If I see a cookbook with a cornbread recipe, I have to make it. If I see it on a menu, I have to order it.

I’ve eaten every kind from the painfully dry concoctions chalkier than a blackboard, to the teeth-achingly sweet and stodgy versions that glue your mouth shut like Araldite; even the jalapeño-laced incarnations so hot they could strip paint off walls.

Most are average, some are good, but few are great. The rendition at recently opened Gold Coast cafe Hudson & Rosie’s Table in Highland Park is fantastic.

Served as the base of their eggs Benedict, it has all the things that make this simple corn meal-based dish, which came to prominence in the south of America in the 18th century, so wonderful. It is light as a sponge with a superb crumb, golden, crisp and caramelised edges and just a hint of sweetness.

The cornbread Benny with beef brisket at Hudson & Rosie's Table.

I want the recipe and I would happily devour a plate of this on its own, but its Benny pairing is also worth getting stuck into.

As well as two runny-yolked eggs and lashings of a zippy hollandaise, it comes with your choice of four toppings: mushroom and rainbow chard ($17.50), smoked salmon ($18.50), bacon ($17.50) and brisket ($18.90). The latter is our pick and is a fitting match with the brined, tender meat providing salty contrast against the eggs and cornbread. Delicious.

Also on the diverse and adventurous menu is everything from a Corn Flake panna cotta with a white chocolate and Corn Flake milk crumble to ricotta and sweet potato gnocchi, even Moroccan carrot fritters.

The fit-out at Hudson & Rosie's Table in Highland Park

There’s also a wide range of vegetarian and vegan dishes available from Buddha bowls to sweet potato and black bean burgers.

Popular Sichuan dish dan dan noodles ($18.90) gives another option outside the typical breakfast box and delivers more blows than a Muay Thai fight in the flavour stakes. The punches come with the sesame-laced noodles, juxtaposed with the sharpness of Sichuan pickles, and a crunchy red cabbage slaw dressed with a ginger-packed chilli oil. A tofu and walnut “mince” makes the dish plant-based, but we choose to add on buttermilk fried chicken for $5.90, which comes with an almost blackened coating that shatters like glass enveloping juicy, fatty chicken. It’s a bold choice for breakfast and on this occasion, fortune favours the bold.

The dan dan noodles with buttermilk fried chicken at Hudson & Rosie's Table in Highland Park.

The adventurous spirit continues into the drinks list as seen in interesting combinations like a peanut butter caramel latte or a vanilla rose hot chocolate, while there are also frappes, cold brew, organic sodas, tea, iced drinks, smoothies and shakes of all kinds, including our Nutella version ($8.90) that tastes like it contains the better part of a jar of the hazelnut and chocolate spread.

Coffee is the Fatcap blend from Gabriel Coffee and is served big and bitter in pretty pink mugs that match the venue’s open and airy decor. Diners can sit inside along a narrow, rust-hued banquette with tiny round tables for sipping coffee and snacking on one of the seriously good Portuguese tarts, or on the plant-lined timber deck out the front, which feels like a mini oasis, despite being on the edge of a shopping centre carpark. Hudson & Rosie’s Table is worth a visit for the cornbread alone, but there’s plenty more to enjoy once you arrive.

HUDSON & ROSIE’S TABLE

106 Alexander Dr, Highland Park

5574 7953

Open Mon-Fri 6am-2pm, Sat-Sun 7am-2pm

VERDICT – Scores out of 5

Food 4

Ambience 4

Service 3

Value 4

Overall 4