Brisbane is not really seen as a city with a laneway culture like Melbourne, but there does seem to be a laneway culture slowly making its way across the city; and while I don’t think we’re quite there yet, there are some pretty good examples of what happens when a few interesting places find themselves tucked away together.
Bakery Lane in Fortitude Valley is one of those spots; a little hidden away, with an artistic feel, good music and a collection of places to eat and drink that makes it worth wandering into rather than just walking past.
It also happens to be home to Joy, which I’ve written about before, and it was while we were waiting to be seated for our Joy dinner that the Girl and I properly paid attention to NUG next door. It went onto our list of restaurants to check out, where it stayed until a Saturday afternoon in June when we were trying to decide what to eat. Pasta sounded like a pretty good idea, NUG was on the list, and we managed to make a booking with about an hour’s notice.
Being close to home, we walked over as usual. We’re now old, so we tend to eat fairly early, around 5:30 or six, which often means being first to a restaurant and watching it fill around us. NUG already had a good number of tables occupied when we arrived; not busy just yet, but certainly not empty either. Offered the choice of sitting inside or out, we decided that a cool June evening was a good enough reason to head indoors, where we ended up only a couple of metres from the kitchen with a pretty good view of what was going on.
It’s quite a pokey little place, with an eclectic collection of chairs and tables that don’t seem particularly concerned about matching. There are bottles of sauces, plates and assorted odds and sods on display, interesting art on the walls, and enough of its old ‘corner store’ feel remaining to make the room quite different from your usual restaurant fit-out. I liked it; a funky little space with the kitchen down at the end, so close that we felt part of the brigade.
That general-store feeling is a leftover from NUG’s beginnings as a grocer, cafe and homewares shop in 2022, with Joy’s Sarah Baldwin involved alongside Jarrod Applebee and Shane Phillips. Somewhere along the way it changed hands, with husband-and-wife team Ben and Ruxi putting more emphasis on feeding people than stocking their pantries. These days, it’s the Mediterranean cooking, with a strong Italian leaning, that brings people through the door.
I normally do a little research when visiting a restaurant, but I have to say that Ben had me stumped. Even after a fair amount of digging around, I couldn’t find much about where he’d worked before NUG. In a Weekender interview he mentions cooking for more than twenty years, but doesn’t say where. Having eaten his food and watched him working away in the kitchen on his own, I’d love to know a little more about those years; he’s clearly a very talented chef.
The menu at NUG is short and changes regularly, which makes sense when Ben is doing all the cooking himself. I suspect keeping it focused is as much a practical decision as anything, but there’s no need for pages of options when a handful of dishes gives you plenty to choose from.
We started with a fig tarte tatin, smoked mozzarella and caramelised balsamic, ordered to share. I’d had a warm tart in mind when we chose it, so the fact that it arrived cold required a little expectation adjustment. It was an incredibly rustic-looking plate, with the mozzarella sitting on top looking rather like half an egg; not quite what I’d pictured, but once we got past the temperature surprise, it was a really lovely way to start dinner.
There was a proper sweetness from the fig, offset by the astringency of the caramelised balsamic, while the mozzarella was firm with a subtle smokiness rather than the sort that smacks you in the face. The pastry still had some crispness, though it wasn’t the really crisp, warm tart I’d initially been imagining, and the combination worked well together. It was also generous enough that sharing didn’t require any particularly careful division; we just nibbled away from the plate between us, enjoying the sweet fig, smoky cheese and that little bite from the balsamic.
Our other shared starter was Queensland tiger prawns grilled over charcoal with stracciatella, so we’d managed to find ourselves with two quite different cheeses across the starters. This time the cheese was soft and gooey, spread underneath prawns that had been split open and grilled with their tails still attached. There was a lovely char on the outside, along with a drizzle of sauce that I couldn’t quite identify; it may have been juices from cooking the prawns, but I wouldn’t want to pretend I knew for sure.
What I did know was that they were delicious. The sweetness of the prawns and their slightly chewy texture worked beautifully against the softer stracciatella, giving each bite a contrast that was every bit as appealing as the flavours. It was another rustic-looking plate, but there was nothing difficult about getting through it; between the two of us, we devoured the lot without any problems whatsoever.
The Girl’s main of Queensland chilli spanner crab, prawn bisque and squid ink spaghetti continued that fairly unrestrained approach to presentation. It was essentially a big pile of food on a plate, with none of the refinement you might find in a carefully arranged nest of pasta. Rustic, definitely; pretty, not particularly. Fortunately, looking pretty was about the last thing it needed to do once she started eating it.
The pasta was cooked perfectly and there was a very generous amount of expertly cooked spanner crab, with enough chilli to make its presence known without taking things too far. The prawn bisque was used sparingly as part of the sauce, rather than leaving the spaghetti swimming in it, and the result was a wholesome, warming and incredibly delicious plate of food. There was plenty of it too, which was no hardship at all while she was eating it; the Girl was still talking about that pasta days after we’d finished dinner.
I’d gone with the braised beef cheek risotto, crispy onion and fresh black truffle from Western Australia, which probably won’t surprise anyone who knows how much I love a good risotto. Rice dishes generally don’t do a lot for me, but risotto is an entirely different thing altogether; put one on a menu and I’m more likely to order it than pass it up. I’ve had plenty over the years, in all sorts of places, and this one still managed to surprise me with just how good it was. Given everything we’d already eaten, perhaps it shouldn’t have, but this was something special.
Presentation was fairly traditional, the risotto spread over a flatter plate, although there was nothing restrained about what had been put on top. A generous covering of black truffle was joined by a ridiculous wedge of braised beef cheek, with crispy onion adding another layer. I’m not usually a huge fan of braised meats either, but the cheek was so beautifully cooked that it fell apart, its rich, unctuous sauce blending into the risotto rather than sitting there as something separate from it.
The rice itself was cooked perfectly, creamy and smooth with that underlying sweetness I particularly love in a good risotto. Against the richness and umami of the beef cheek sauce, it was just superb, and then you had the earthiness and aroma of the truffle coming through, followed by the little crunch of the onion. There was a lot going on without anything getting in the way of the pleasure of eating it; the beefy earthiness, the sweet rice, the sauce and those different textures all working together beautifully.
It’s one of the best risottos I’ve had in Brisbane, and a large part of the reason we’ve added NUG to our repeat visit list; months later, I’m still telling people about it.
We didn’t stay for dessert. There was only one on the menu and it hadn’t particularly grabbed our attention, but the reality was that we were so full from those generous portions that another course was never really on the cards. We’d eaten incredibly well, were thoroughly satisfied, and were very pleased we’d finally worked our way around to this particular entry on our restaurant list.
The service was very much part of what made that first visit so good. Ben brought dishes out and stopped to chat during the meal, while the small room and the husband-and-wife team made the whole thing personable and intimate. It’s impressive enough seeing one person producing food of that quality from the kitchen; having him come out and share a little of the evening with us added to the enjoyment.
I’d read that Ruxi took particular pride in looking after her guests, remembering them after their first visit and picking up on the little details of what they liked and didn’t like. Having been back a number of times since that first dinner, I can certainly vouch for the friendly welcome and her memory of our previous visits. There’s something lovely about returning to a small restaurant and being remembered, especially when the food has already given you plenty of reasons to come back.
I still haven’t managed to fill in all the blanks in Ben’s cooking history, but there’s a lot less mystery about why we keep finding ourselves back in Bakery Lane. It’s just really good!
