The new restaurant booking out most nights

The owners of Brisbane’s best cafe have opened a restaurant and they’ve been run off their feet by the response.

Oh Boy, Bok Choy! Indeed! After being open just 12 days, the new pan-Asian eatery in Stafford on Brisbane’s northside had to close due to June’s Covid lockdown. Up for a pivot, the owners offered takeaway, something they had not been planning to do until August.

The green-hued restaurant, with a name designed to draw attention to its vegetable-loving credentials, resembles something of an oasis beside busy Stafford Rd, its vibe built with a strangler fig skeleton doubling as a sculpture up the back, plants spilling from a shelf above the open kitchen, moss-coloured banquettes and a lime neon sign proclaiming the restaurant’s name on the back wall.

Owned by John and Amanda Scott, who also run the popular Farm House in Kedron, last year’s The Courier-Mail cafe of the year, it’s a welcoming, family friendly venue with bare tables able to seat 75 inside and 14 out.

Oasis on Stafford Road: Oh Boy, Bok Choy at Stafford. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Heading the kitchen is Hieu Dinh, who came over from Farm House, and the menu reflects his Vietnamese heritage as well as including dishes from China, Malaysia and Thailand. With vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options, the selection begins with snacks such as crispy silken tofu and winds its way through popcorn cauliflower, to bao, dumplings, a vegan pad see ew and chicken pho to larger dishes such as whisky tamarind pork belly with watermelon salad, massaman curry and vegan green curry.

In a hospitable gesture, all diners receive a small, complimentary bok choy salad to start. Next, we gnaw on corn riblets (strips of corn on the cob) deep-fried for a little too long and adorned with a lipsmacking nori and sesame seed furikake seasoning ($11.90).

Prawn toast presents as robust fried white bread wedges, the top embedded with a flavoursome layer of prawn meat crusted with black and white sesame seeds, with yuzu mayo for dipping ($14.50). The ratio of bread to prawn is high, but its charms are irresistible none the less. Ginger and garlic-enhanced pork and duck dumplings ($12.50) offer a lighter touch, delicate bundles with a filling that packs a punch.

Veg pledge: Oh Boy, Bok Choy’s corn riblets. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Hieu’s glazed masterstock chicken ($26.50), with the crisp bronzed skin of a 1970s lifeguard, is on the money although the thick tempura batter cladding the accompanying spray of enoki overwhelms the mushroom flavours.

Service from a range of staff is friendly and earnest, if somewhat inexperienced, we’re asked half a dozen times by different people if we like our food. However, the food is delivered quickly.

Pad see ew at Oh Boy! Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Unusually, the drinks menu offers more non-alcoholic cocktails than alcoholic, most using Australian-made Lyres non-alcoholic spirits. My In Between the Trees is a refreshing mix of the gin-replica Lyre’s Dry London Spirit with spiced aloe, Vietnamese mint and lychee. The clipped wine list, with 16 bottles and seven by-the-glass options, includes five drops from Queenslander Witches Falls, supplemented by beers including a selection from Sea Legs in Kangaroo Point.

Dessert is a choice of soft-serve ice-cream, Vietnamese coffee panna cotta ($10.90) jazzed up with a puff of fairy floss and sesame peanut brittle or our shared coconut jelly with spiced strawberries and star anise syrup ($10.90), which is a not-too-sweet, understated conclusion.

Sweet treat: Oh Boy,‘s coffee panna cotta. Pic Mark Cranitch.

What was amazing was that by the time we were casting around for a waiter to get the bill, the place was almost full. This on a Monday night in a new restaurant. Takeaway also proved so overwhelmingly popular in lockdown that it will remain, with orders at this stage to be placed by 4.30pm to allow staff to then focus on the in-house diners.

Oh Boy is a customer-first kind of restaurant, building on the owner’s cafe experience. They know most families these days have someone with a food preference so they’re catering for it. Demand for alcohol-free alternatives is rising, they’re on it. And while there were a couple of glitches, the dishes are big-flavoured and generous and seemingly just what locals want.