FoodMeUpScotty

Bring a little Joy into your life

There are some restaurants you book the same week you want to go. You check availability, pick a time, confirm. Easy. Then there are restaurants where securing a table is the event itself; where you mark the first of the month on your calendar like a concert ticket drop, and refresh the booking page at…

Two Hat Agnes: this time we’re playing with fire 🔥

I still remember the night I convinced a bunch of friends to come check out Gerard’s Bistro. It was 2012, Ben Williamson had just taken out Brisbane’s Best New Restaurant, and I’d been talking the place up for weeks. Our booking had somehow been cancelled before we’d even arrived. What followed was two hours standing…

Was my 3rd visit to Restaurant Dan Arnold ‘the charm’?

There are restaurants that you should love. The kind that arrive with such an impeccable set of credentials that loving them feels almost like an obligation; the right chef, the right training, the right philosophy, the right accolades. You want to love them. You keep giving them chances. And each time you sit down, you…

1 Hat Clarence has found a new home

There are dishes that follow you. Not in a haunting way; more like a persistent nudge from something your brain filed under unfinished business. You eat it once, you can’t stop thinking about it, and eventually you find yourself making a plan to go back… Or, in our case, just turning up on a Friday…

Exhibition: The best restaurant in Queensland by far

“As usual, the food was really interesting and very delicious” This was the feedback when Exhibition owner Tim Scott received from us at the end of the meal when checking in on our experience. It really feels like a massive understatement to call what we’d just experienced as just a meal; a better way to…

Montrachet – King Street Bowen Hills 2 Hats

The king is dead, long live the king… Even though we were living in a different country, we always kept an eye on what was happening in the Brisbane food scene, just as a way to feel a little connected to home. Unsurprisingly, during our ten years away (and especially through Covid) there were a…

Korean Fine Dining Hits Brisbane!

I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that South Korea is hot right now; I’ve been watching a lot of Korean TV lately, which is somehow hilarious, heartfelt and slickly produced all at once. I mean, who hasn’t loved Squid Game or Physical 100… Such wildly gripping drama. You may also have noticed that Korean…

Is 3 Hatted Sixpenny “Anniversary Worth?”

There’s a quiet little ritual the Girl and I have held onto for nearly three decades now. Every year, when our anniversary rolls around, we do something a little special. It always revolves around food, of course it does, and usually involves tracking down the very best restaurant we can find. When we lived in…

Deer Duck Bistro: Worthy of 2 Hats?

Memory can be a funny thing when it comes to restaurants. Before we left Brisbane for Hong Kong, Deer Duck Bistro was one of those places we visited a few times and always left thinking, yeah, that was pretty good. It had this quirky charm, eclectic without being chaotic, and it sat quietly in that space…

Flashback: World #32 Nerua Spain

Life gets pretty hectic at times, and while I tried to keep this blog up to date regularly, I missed posting about some amazing restaurants. So I’ve created the Flashback Series; short sharp updates about some of the best restaurants I’ve been to and never wrote about… Hope you enjoy I’m starting with a restaurant…

Jean May: The new Frenchie in Wanchai

I’ve been a little obsessed with two things of late. Firstly, I’ve been trying like crazy to get back into Jean May for a second visit. The second obsession has been duck. Did you know that it’s almost impossible to get a decent duck breast through any of the home delivery services? Believe me, I’ve…

LPM Restaurant & Bar: Stay for the dessert!

Gone are the days where I could just pop into a fine dining restaurant for a casual meal for the fun of it. Firstly, the big corporate salary is a thing of the past; but mainly, while running and owning fitness centres, it’s important not to indulge too often and stock on the weight! The…

Cornerstone: Big flavours extreme value

Oh hey! Long time no see… Can you believe it’s been 953 days since I last put pen to paper to talk about food? There’s been so much that’s happened in the last two and a half years and I’ve been a little busy and distracted. Well, I suddenly find myself with a bit of…

NYC: World #82 & 3* Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare

This is a tale that has humble beginnings; it starts in the tiny little hamlet of Cefalù in Sicily and finishes in New York City. A dining buddy who I trust implicitly was having one of the meals of his life in a restaurant called Liska in the aforementioned little village in Southern Italy. A…

Cosme: World #40

There’s always a level of excitement about heading to New York; at first, it’s restrained, but as you get closer to arrival, the excitement ratchets up. For me, part of the excitement is trying to figure out which of the city’s more amazing restaurants I’ll try to get into. It’s a task made difficult by…

Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants # 32: Neighbourhood

Neighbourhood wasn’t really a restaurant on my must visit radar. Even after my foodie buddy Alex mentioned that she was ‘dying’ to visit, my attitude was still a little bit ‘meh’. It wasn’t until I saw that the little restaurant has made it to #32 on the recently published Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant list that…

London: The 2* Claude Bosi at Bibendum

Gee, you’ve gotta have bags of confidence to set up shop in the Bibendum… Otherwise known as Michelin House, the permanent UK headquarters for the famed Michelin organisation. You know the history, of course, a tyre company that started to tell folks about restaurants around the place…. Well, Claude Bosi is no ordinary kind of…