Help your weight loss goals with this healthy Queensland cafe

Offering healthier versions of junk and high calorie foods, this fitness-focused cafe will help keep your diet on track.

Young, salt-licked surfers, boards under arms and dripping from their early morning ocean entanglement stride past, crossing paths with Lycra-clad ladies out for their daily exercise fix. While a thong throw away on the beach, nippers race up and down the sand practising their surf skills.

Mermaid Beach cafe BSKT is in the heart of fitness territory – where the terms “active lifestyle” and “clean living” aren’t catchphrases or overused hashtags, but simply a way of life.

Inside healthy cafe BSKT at Mermaid Beach. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

It’s no surprise then that the sprawling eatery – complete with footpath dining, an outdoor covered courtyard area with kids’ play space and warm, timber and plant-lined internal dining rooms – has a focus on health.

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That doesn’t mean, however, plates of boiled broccoli, poached chicken and washed lettuce, but rather an approach to nutrition that makes eating well appealing – no matter how strong your penchant for junk food may be.

In fact, many traditional fast food-style or high-calorie dishes have been given a dietary overhaul here like the breakfast burrito, eggs Benedict, pizza and pancakes so you have your cake and can eat it too.

The interior dining room is comfortable with a nature-inspired fit-out. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

The BSKT burrito bowl ($24), for instance, swaps sour cream for natural yoghurt covering a mound of coriander-enhanced shredded beef, topping low-GI brown rice.

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Two tortillas tucked down the side of the bowl means diners can be as generous or as controlled as they like with the filling and portion sizes of their DIY burritos that are made flavourful by chipotle mayo and an avocado salsa.

Meanwhile, devout carnivores should even appreciate the Moroccan lamb salad ($25). Tossing a tangle of leaves with a crumble of pan-fried lamb mince, ribbons of carrot, bitey pickled onion and a shower of dukkah in a passionfruit and orange dressing, it will be a dish you’ll want to add to your meal prep. Giving it true star quality, however, is the fan of deep-fried flatbread crescents on the side ready for a swipe through the spicy cashew dip on top.

The Moroccan lamb salad with flatbread and cashew dip. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Drinks – which run from coconut water and kombucha to coffee and green juices – also hit the health brief with even a chocolate Bounty smoothie made more nutritious thanks to cacao powder, maca and chocolate protein.

Service is friendly and as laid-back as the shoeless surfers who walk past, with the diners doing most of the work ordering on a COVID-safe, tablet device.

For those looking to lose weight for summer, BSKT offers plenty of healthy choices, but even better, it teaches diners that food that’s good for you can actually taste great too.

BSKT CAFE

4 Lavarack Rd, Mermaid Beach

5526 6565

bskt.com.au

Open Mon-Fri 6am-3pm, Sat-Sun 6am-4pm

VERDICT – Scores out of 5

Food 3.5

Service 3

Ambience 3.5

Value 3

Originally published as Help your weight loss goals with this healthy Queensland cafe