The Gold Coast – eating and drinking beyond the strip

The best way to see Surfers Paradise is from 20km away. From Currumbin, where I have been living for the past two months, one can take in the beauty of Sin City’s saw-toothed skyline without having to get too close to the garishness at ground-level.

I have long been aware of the Gold Coast’s hidden charms. I attended university in Robina, lived in Tallebudgera valley for three months two years ago and have found myself sequestered here again while my partner worked for the third consecutive year in the control room of Big Brother.

The Gold Coast of the Big Brother housemates – that of schoolies’ week and fatal falls from balconies, the Gold Coast of the GC600’s jelly-wrestling competition and of the Gold Coast Bulletin’s stories about couples having sex in the back of police cars – is not a place I really recognise. My Gold Coast is more like Sydney or Melbourne than residents of those cities might expect: a place with excellent restaurants, surprisingly good coffee and a population that, though occasionally a bit rough around the edges, leaves other places I’ve visited for dead in terms of conversation, hospitality and willingness to enter a meat raffle.

You thought you knew the Gold Coast? Think again. Here’s the best places to eat, drink and relax.

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Caffeine hit

For excellent coffee go to Feather & Docks (1/1099 Gold Coast Highway, Palm Beach) and Groove Cafe (455 Golden Four Drive, Tugun). The former not only churns out some of the best espresso I’ve had on the coast, but its breakfast menu veers away from the usual bacon and eggs. Groove Cafe is reasonably priced—not always the easiest thing to find up here – and the fact that its barista, James Park, has a passion for Neapolitan music that causes him to break out in song at the drop of an espresso bean. The place hosts the occasional three-course Italian dinner.

If all you’re after is a hit of caffeine, Canteen Coffee (23 Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads), which has a focus on single origins, is the place to go, though be careful if it’s the weekend: the place is absolutely fit to burst.

There’s also The Plantation House Cafe (1/43 Tallebudgera Creek Road, West Burleigh), the atmosphere of which falls somewhere between A Year in Provence and the down-homey feel of the American south. I think it’s the cane chairs and homemade hash browns. For those whose perception of the Gold Coast is entirely negative – all condom stores and scantily clad metre maids and bad tan lines on bad fake bodies – this is one of those places that will expand your idea of the place immeasurably. Take some Faulkner to read and order a mint julep.

I go out for brunch and coffee more than I do for dinner and it is on this front that the Gold Coast compares most favourably with anything you might find in the state capitals. In addition to really good coffee, Barefoot Barista (Shop 5/10 Palm Beach Avenue, Palm Beach) also sports an impressive line-up of smoothies for the health conscious and excellent hamburgers for the less health conscious.

Sanctuary markets

There are plenty of beaches to be enjoyed, but what you really should do one afternoon is take to the interior. A drive through the lush greenery of Tallebudgera valley or a visit to Tambourine Mountain is worth the time and effort. If you arrive back at the beach at the southern end of the coast, and if it’s a Friday night, consider dinner at Sanctuary markets. Hosted by Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (28 Tomewin Street, Currumbin), it’s hardly off the beaten tourist track but it’s good value and gives a number of local food venues a chance to shine. One local I know goes down with a plastic bag every week and picks up takeaway for the next seven days.

Outdoor art

My partner’s roster and my lack of a driver’s licence mean that we’re more or less restricted to hanging out within walking distance of our apartment. The Swell sculpture festival was on again when we arrived this year and brought hundreds to Currumbin beach each day, with pieces that ran the thematic gamut from mermaids to the world’s most-famous gun – a giant AK-47 made of flattened car parts, Daniel Clemmett’s Keeping Up with the Kalashnikovs, won this year’s major prize.

To drink

Decent places to drink of an evening include Bin 12 (12 James Street, Burleigh Heads), which has excellent happy hour prices and a witty taste in multimedia decor – a video spliced together so that all the James Bonds are playing poker together? Priceless – and Ze Pickle (Connor Street, Burleigh Heads), which is only two minutes walk away. Pair them together for a pleasant night out.

While those who like a little doof doof in their clubs might be better off in Surfers than the quieter parts of the coast. But those looking for something in the vein of Sydney’s Victoria Room or Melbourne’s Supper Club would do well to check out Cavalier Bar & Supper (1710 Gold Coast Highway, Burleigh Heads). Just next door to Justin Lane Pizzeria & Bar (Justin Lane, Burleigh Heads) is an excellent little gourmet pizza place down an old shopping arcade that still houses an operational barbershop. I order my Hendrick’s gin martinis bone dry, stirred with an olive.

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To eat

The coast’s restaurant scene has improved immeasurably since I attended university here and even since I last wrote about it two years ago. Hellenika Restaurant (2235 Gold Coast Highway, Nobby Beach) remains one of my favourites, applying a high-end approach to decor and service to straight-up, traditional Greek cooking. Playing around with flavours from the other end of the Mediterranean, Pablo Pablo (2 5^th Avenue, Palm Beach) is a tapas place that gives a modern Australian bent to the cuisine of my favourite country. I come for the dry sherry and stay for more of it. Order the pork belly at Hellenika and the patatas bravas at Pablo Pablo.

I spend most of my time at the Currumbin Vikings’ Surf Lifesaving Club (741 Pacific Parade, Currumbin). An occasional afternoon pint has turned gradually into a social membership (complete with a free breakfast and a dollar off the price of the beer) and from there into a sort of unofficial junior membership in the group of older men who patronise the place each afternoon. What might at first glance to be a group of barflies with nothing better to do is in fact a treasure trove of anecdote and experience and a first-class course in balls-out ribaldry. There’s not a bloke at the table who doesn’t have a story to tell or a wisecrack to try out on whoever it is we’re picking on that day. They refer to me, depending on their mood, as either a pup or a young rooster.

On any given Saturday afternoon, this table of regulars is liable to buy up half the raffle tickets in the place – $10 for a book of 70 numbers – meaning there’s a fair chance one of us is going to walk away with one of the nearly 20 prizes. On my first at-bat, I scored two roasting chickens and three huge rump steaks. It felt for a moment like I was becoming a Queenslander. I was definitely becoming a local.

It tends to be from this table at the club that I gaze out north at the skyline with which I began this article and thank my lucky stars that I’m not up there knee-deep in the sleaze and plastic beauty. Occasionally some RAAF jets will tear along just above the water or, as was the case more recently, Black Hawks in training for the G20 swooped by low and ominous like wasps. There’s always someone body-boarding into shore and another beer to be had. After all, it’s happy hour and members get cheap schooners. And when the lights of the city up the way begin to turn themselves on for the night, you realise that, from here, it’s actually kind of pretty.