For so long, the only options after about 9pm were pizza by the slice, a furtive trip through the golden arches, or the 2am kebab of regret.

TOP 10: Brisbane’s best health food joints

In many parts of southeast Queensland, that’s still the case, but there are a growing number of venues in Brisbane’s inner-city offering fresh, substantial and healthy fare until midnight and beyond.

Dominating Brisbane’s late-night dining scene is Damian Griffiths and his network of eateries, including Alfredo’s, Kwan Brothers and Chester Street Bakery and Bar.

His first foray into after-hours dining stemmed from the frustrations he encountered when he first opened Fortitude Valley’s Limes Hotel more than five years ago.

“I hated when guests would come to the front desk at 9pm looking for somewhere to eat,” Mr Griffiths said.

“It was embarrassing calling restaurant after restaurant on a Monday or Tuesday night and being told ‘no, we’re closed’ or ‘no, we’re taking no more orders’ or even at 8.30pm being told the kitchen had closed.

“Even now, Brisbane is like a sleepy hollow on a Monday night, even though there are still people who want to go and eat somewhere.”

Alfredo’s pizzeria, around the corner from Limes Hotel, serves food until midnight, five nights a week, and until 3am on Fridays and Saturdays, while Kwan Brothers serves its full menu until 11pm every night, then a reduced offering until 3am weekends.

Mr Griffiths, a former immigration lawyer, said customers came from “all walks of life”.

“We get the most random patrons coming through – from hipster kids to a church choir group that rolls in after rehearsals on Monday night at 11.30pm,’’ he said.

Trading hours at Chester Street Bakery and Bar at New Farm are a little more fluid, but Mr Griffiths said the licensed bakery closed “close to midnight” most nights.

“That area is a bit of a ghost town at night; by 10pm we’re the last ones standing,” Mr Griffiths said.

“We get everyone from dates to a bunch of businessmen needing a sugar fix. And we get people coming in at 10pm to talk about a birthday cake they want to order.”

His tips to staying financially viable on slow nights include running smaller kitchens and implementing a delivery service to surrounding suburbs.

“We take the good with the bad. There are some nights we make no money, but it’s good for our reputation to be there and be open,’’ he said.

“(Late-night dining) is not going to work in every area, but in the inner-city, in high-density with people working long days with busy lives, there is a market.”

Bonnie Shearston, co-owner of city establishments Public and the month-old Red Hook, also cited frustration with early closing times as her motivation to offer late-night fare.

“Ever since I’ve lived in Brisbane, I’ve found it frustrating that when you finish late at night there’s nowhere you can get a meal,” Ms Shearston said.

“And if I’m hungry after 9pm, there have got to be others too.”

She opened Canvas at Woolloongabba with business partner Tom Sanceau in 2010, never intending for the bar to focus on food.

“To be honest, the focus wasn’t on late-night dining; it was more on drinks, but we would have people coming in looking for something to eat because there were no other places open then, serving food,’’ she said.

Public opened on George St in 2011 offering a full menu from 11.30am until 11pm six nights a week to a mix of diners, including a steady stream of QPAC patrons who trek across the nearby Kurilpa Bridge.

“We get a lot of people in the area who’ve worked late and we get them coming down from their offices on the way home,” Ms Shearston said.

“We often get large groups of people who’ve been at a party who realise they’re hungry and will call us and say ‘hey, there’s a group of 17, can we come in?’.”

Ms Shearston and Mr Sanceau’s latest venture is Red Hook, an alfresco bar and dining space in the city’s Gresham Lane serving American-style fare. It opened mid-August and initially traded until 11pm, but the duo has already extended opening hours until midnight to meet demand.

“We were finding we had a quiet period about 10pm so were shutting about 11pm, but we found people were coming to us at 10.55pm because they were super hungry,” Ms Shearston said.

“At night, we’re busy all the way through from after-work drinks and dinner, then we get another wave of people from The Gresham looking for something to eat.

“People use that laneway to get from Adelaide to Queen St after work and when there are functions in the city, people will walk past us to get takeaway.”

Restaurant and cafe owners are largely in accord that late-night dining in Brisbane started to take off about two years ago.

But before then, The Brunswick Social was busy serving dumplings, buns and Asian finger food from its subterranean Fortitude Valley space since 2011.

Mat Hewitt said offering “decent food, even late at night” was behind the bar’s decision to open the kitchen until midnight on Wednesday and Sunday and 2am Thursday to Saturday.

“Our core food offering has basically remained the same over the years, give or take some seasonal changes to the menu.

“We find our dumpling offering works well and is really accessible by a range of customers,” Mr Hewitt said.

However, the tag of trendsetter belongs to The Pancake Manor on Charlotte St, which has served pancakes, crepes and burgers 24 hours a day, seven days a week from its Charlotte St location since 1979.

Party people still shuffle to the converted church once pubs and clubs close to order a hearty breakfast from 5am.

The Brisbane institution lost its monopoly on around-the-clock dining when The Treasury Casino opened in 1995 with the 24-hour Cafe 21.

While that space is now occupied by Luke Nguyen’s Fat Noodle, which trades until 11pm weeknights and midnight on Friday and Saturday, the casino still operates the open-all-hours Kitchen at Treasury.

Executive chef Steven Jones said palates were changing, nominating a shift towards “fresher, healthier options” over the past two years.

“People are a bit more picky about what they eat now. In the past, it was for fried goodies and pizzas; people used to have a few drinks on a Friday or Saturday night and want carbs,’’ Mr Jones said.

He nominated Kitchen at Treasury’s pan-fried barramundi dish as the casino’s most popular meal, estimating 7000 portions of the seafood dish, served with salad, were ordered last month at all hours of the day and night.

“We serve a lot of steaks during the night,” Mr Jones revealed.

Fat Noodle’s signature dish, the Fat Pho Noodles, was also a popular late-night feed.

Mr Jones hasn’t ruled out offering pizzas, or even those sneaky early morning kebabs, if customers again start requesting heavier fare.

“If they’re going to eat, I want to keep them in the building rather than see them go down the street.”

For all the talk about late-night food growing in popularity, there is one inner-city location where diners still have little choice but to high-tail it elsewhere after about 10pm.

While the South Bank and South Brisbane entertainment precinct does a bustling trade in pre-show dinners, finding substantial fare after an event is a different story.

Alan Simseker has owned and managed Brisbane restaurants for more than a decade and said demand for later meals in that area simply wasn’t strong enough to make it viable.

He opened The Burrow at West End more than two years ago and said the gourmet pizza house and craft beer joint offered its full menu until 10pm weeknights and 10.30pm-11pm on Friday and Saturday, depending on numbers.

Mr Simseker said requests for dinner after that time were “a rarity”.

He estimated The Burrow and its neighbourhood stalwart, The Three Monkeys, were among the latest trading cafes and restaurants in West End.

“The demand for full-on meals isn’t there, but if we see that the demand changes then we’d look at changing what we do; we’re licensed to midnight,’’ he said.