Historic GPO finally reborn as a $9 million food and drink precinct
The Fortitude Valley icon features three venues, a 600-piece chandelier, a 400-bottle back bar and a 1700-bottle wine cellar, and is being overseen by an award-winning chef and sommelier team.
A heritage building is a rare and precious thing in Brisbane, particularly for a restaurant or bar. So, the question once an operator lands one is, what to do with it?
Restaurateurs down south often express curiosity about new venue and precinct builds in Queensland’s biggest city because we’ve become comparatively good at them. We had to.
But the opposite also holds true: Sydney and Melbourne do great heritage fit-outs because they’re big cities with a lot of money that have been doing them forever.
It’s understandable, then, that when Artesian Hospitality released the ritzy-looking renders of its redesigned GPO precinct, it captured the imagination of Brisbane diners.
Here was a $9 million heritage build that looked the equal of anything down south, and perhaps the best Brisbane example since the opening of Stanley at Howard Smith Wharves in late 2019, or Donna Chang in 2018.
Finally, earlier this month, locals got to see the reimagined GPO precinct in all its completed pomp, as its three venues – elevated restaurant Tama, The Gatsby cocktail bar, and The Tax Office restaurant and bar – opened in Fortitude Valley.
“You just look at it from the outside and smile,” says partner and director of restaurant operations Alan Hunter.
“It almost looks out of place. Here we are in the Valley where everything’s been knocked down and rebuilt, and then you look across at this thing – who would build anything like that in this time and age?”
“It almost looks out of place. Who would build anything like that in this time and age?”
Outside, GPO has been given a treatment of brilliant white paint, making its 1887-built Victorian Italianate facade pop on the corners of Ann and Winn streets.
Inside, it’s just as striking, if a degree flashier than those renders made out.
The 80-seat Tama is all marble and stone, with two-storey windows that look out onto Winn Street. Down one side of the room is a line of enormous green velvet booths and an angular art deco-inspired feature wall.
On the second floor, there’s a lounge area with separate private dining spaces for 10 and 40 people, respectively. Dominating the space is an enormous hand-blown 600-piece chandelier.
The Gatsby occupies GPO’s upstairs corner room. An upscale whisky and cocktail bar, it leans into the precinct’s 1920s vibes with low-set velvet booths, marble tables, brass accents and shelves of vintage paraphernalia.
The defining feature is a vault in which regular drinkers can store a bottle of spirits to finish at a later date. This is a place made for table service, but expect it to pump on Friday and Saturday nights.
Downstairs, The Tax Office is a relatively approachable venue with high ceilings, expansive terrazzo bar tops and parquetry floors.
“It’s not just one venue opening here,” Hunter says. “It’s three identities that are trading under the one roof. They have separate ideal clienteles. They have separate sets of trading hours. There are two kitchens that serve them for different purposes.”
Overseeing the food for Tama and The Gatsby is group executive chef Richard Ousby, previously executive chef for Stokehouse and Stokehouse Q, and a Young Chef of the Year award winner.
Ousby has written a broad menu with a bunch of typical beats, but runs much of it through an imported charcoal-powered Josper oven, which can reach temperatures well exceeding 400 degrees.
“The cornerstone [for food] was a kitchen that uses charcoal and wood components,” Hunter says.
“So, that was always going to direct the proteins – lobster or bugs or different cuts of steak – that are really going to get accented by that charcoal cooking, which is in vogue at the moment but for the right reasons.”
Small plates include beetroot with goat curd, witlof and pomegranate molasses, yellowfin tuna crudo with kohlabi rémoulade and fennel, and beef tartare with parsnip, balsamic and egg yolk.
For something larger, you might order oven-roasted Berkshire pork belly with apple and macadamia, pan-fried quail with chestnuts, prune and honey, or a seafood veloute with mussels, scallops, whiting and ham hock.
From the Josper there’s Moreton Bay bugs by weight, Tasmanian lobster and deboned whole coral trout.
Elsewhere, there’s a house-made pasta menu that includes a signature Tama bolognaise made with Wagyu and Kurobuta pork; a beef menu that features cut-to-order seven-score Wagyu scotch fillet; a snacks menu; and a bread, oyster and table-side caviar menu.
“Richard can really drag the best out of a lettuce or a piece of beef or whatever it is and make it look beautiful on the plate, but still have all the flavour and integrity and tie it back to a local farmer or artisan who really respects the produce that they’re providing to the restaurant,” Hunter says.
For drinks in Tama, Hunter, an award-winning sommelier, is overseeing a wine list 500 bottles long, backed by a fetching glass-walled cellar that can hold up to 1700 bottles, with another 2000-plus bottles on site.
Next door in The Gatsby there’s a drinks menu a whopping 70 pages long, fuelled by a back bar 400 bottles deep.
It leads with signature cocktails such as the Amalf (Belvedere vodka, Lillet Rose, fresh-pressed watermelon, citrus agave) and Nerts (Toki whisky, toasted sesame vermouth, puffed rice orgeat, yuzu curd), before moving on to classic drinks, a lengthy selection of champagne and blanc de blancs, blanc de noirs and sparkling rose, and a deep collection of whisky.
For food in The Gatsby, there’s a simple selection of bites largely lifted from the Tama snacks menu.
Downstairs, The Tax Office plays the role of the precinct’s approachable Ann Street shopfront.
For food, chef Sam Skelton is preparing a modern gastropub-style menu of share plates, mains and sandwiches.
There’s whole-grilled prawns with miso butter; sriracha salmon tartare with lime, cucumber and crispy wontons; a crab linguine with a garlic and chilli emulsion; a 250-gram five-score Wagyu rump cap; and a buttermilk chicken burger with coleslaw and Korean ssamjang paste.
For drinks, there are eight taps pouring a mix of craft and international beers, with two additional taps dedicated to Canadian Club & Dry, and a Byron Bay Brewery peach and mango seltzer. There’s also a clutch of bottled beers and a focused list of mostly new-world wines.
“I’ve worked with a lot of good operators, whether they’re smaller family-owned ones like Phil Johnson with Echo, or the Finks (Otto, Quay), who are probably Australia’s leading luxury dining group,” Hunter says.
“Artesian wanted to genuinely get into this space … and they wanted the right people to execute that.
“There’s an honesty in understanding that they had a shortfall in people to achieve those goals. They wanted us to lead with information, have input and drive the narrative of these venues and make sure they can sit up with these other great places we’ve worked with.”
Tama
Open Wed-Thu 5.30pm-12am; Fri 12pm-2.30pm, 5.30pm-12am; Sat 5.30pm-12am
740 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, (07) 3184 6745
The Gatsby
Open Daily 5pm-late
740 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, (07) 3184 6757
The Tax Office
Open Thu 4pm-late, Fri 12pm-late, Sat-Sun 4pm-late
740 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, (07) 3184 6762
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.