The year kicked off with a bang, as 10 new openings slid onto the scene over summer. In autumn and winter, things stayed consistent with six new openings in each season.
As we move into spring and the city starts heating up again, these are the five new Brisbane spots – and one Gold Coast opening – that should be on your radar.
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Courtesy of Bistro Margaux
Bistro Margaux, Mermaid Beach
In recent years, Nobby Beach has built up an attractive dining precinct featuring major developments and serious hospitality operators. Bistro Margaux is one of the latest to open in the decidedly up-and-coming area. But rather than focusing on the new, Margaux is a French bistro with old-school bones and charm. Lars Kollrepp, the chef-owner behind nearby Lars, wanted Margaux to feel like the kind of place you could settle into for an afternoon or evening.
The menu is built around the pleasures of traditional French cooking. Start with a warm baguette and whipped Lescure butter or oysters with a zesty mignonette. Escargots come cooked with plenty of garlic and parsley butter. For something fresher, cured Ora King salmon comes with crème fraîche and horseradish, while the obligatory steak tartare is served with crisp frites. The more substantial dishes lean into French tradition, too. Duck confit comes with potato gratin and a green salad, while steak frites is served with a choice of béarnaise, pepper or entrecôte sauce. And the wine? All French.
Photo: Fergus Hurst
San Telmo, Brisbane
Interstate operators muscling in on home turf. It’s a story we’re hearing more and more in Brisbane. Yet few have put in the effort like Ben Robinson and Mikey Dalton, who moved north three years in advance of opening a Brisbane outpost of Melbourne’s Argentinian steakhouse San Telmo.
The 100-seat Edward Street venue was designed by Kate Archibald. The fit-out takes cues from the Melbourne original: black-and-white tiling, tan furnishings and eye-catching pendant lights crafted from vintage soda bottles imported from San Telmo, the venue’s namesake and the oldest barrio (neighbourhood) of Buenos Aires.
The open kitchen is hard to ignore. That’s where you’ll find Dalton, who previously worked at San Telmo Melbourne and its sister restaurant, Palermo. His opening menu featured all the Argentinian staples – empanadas, chorizo, morcilla (spiced blood sausage) and flan with dulce de leche – but also some less common dishes like chapa (grilled Argentinian flatbread), a spanner crab bomba with lemon aioli and piquant sauce, and tuna carpaccio with charred mandarin and sweet pepper escabeche.
On the charcoal-fed parrilla, Dalton is using premium suppliers like Stockyard and O’Connor’s Premium Beef, with a 500-gram striploin and a 500-gram grass-fed rib eye on the menu.
Photo: Fergus Hurst
Bistro Tino, New Farm
Mosconi owner Mark Rotolone’s grandfather Rosario ran Carramar Coffee Lounge in New Farm back in the 1960s, and Bistro Tino’s unhurried, European spirit feels like a nod to that legacy.
Bistro Tino looks timeless. Rotolone brought together a group of friends to collaborate on the fit-out, including Meredith Burke of By Burke Design, architect George Kouparitsas, Mark Percival of SCD Timber and the Baldelli family of Art Sofa Upholstery. The result is a genuine contender for Brisbane’s most stunning opening of 2026.
The cafe has taken over the old King Arthur Cafe site next door to Mosconi. There’s a sleek Tasmanian oak bar, where you can order a $2 Single O espresso to drink standing up.
For food, chef Alfie Cutler (ex-Golden Avenue) worked closely with Mosconi head chef Catherine Anders to create a menu that diverges from the usual breakfast staples. There’s pan con tomate (Spanish tomato toast) with raw yellowfin tuna and anchovy butter; potato and zucchini frittata with blue swimmer crab and crème fraîche; and Abruzzese ham with house pickles, soft egg, comté and seeded bread.
Later in the day, expect simple, hearty fare like pastina minestrone; chicken Maryland with pea fricassee and jus; and a Portuguese-inspired roll with pork collar, provolone and tomato relish.
Courtesy of Goodside / Markus Ravik
Goodside, Brisbane
The Fanda Group has turned Southside’s Kiki kiosk into Goodside, an Asian brunch cafe doing rice bowls, brightly hued drinks, and cha chaan teng-inspired sandwiches. One particularly popular sandwich is Benny Lam’s prawn har gow katsu. It’s made with bread baked to Lam’s own recipe and a katsu-crumbed har gow filling which is finished with Chinese-style radish and jalapeno salsa.
The rest of the menu is filled with salty, sticky ingredients. It features a cha chaan teng-style egg and ham sandwich, a ham and cheese pocket with sun-dried tomato, and two rice bowls, including one with pork belly, sticky soy, Asian greens and a tea egg (cracked and boiled in tea). Sweets include a matcha tart, and a baked coffee bun filled with cappuccino custard.
To drink, there’s a Goodside iced coffee made with double espresso, iced tea and condensed milk cold foam, and a lychee iced tea and watermelon mocktail, both finished with coconut cold foam.
Photo: Fergus Hurst
Sancho Taqueria, Stafford
When Amanda and John Scott told friends they were opening a restaurant dedicated to New Mexican cuisine, people thought they were crazy, but the venue based around the food of the US state opened on June 18. The couple – who also run Farmhouse Kedron and Oh Boy Bok Choy – are keen to educate Brisbanites on the intricacies of New Mexican cuisine, which owes as much to the region’s 23 Native American peoples as it does to Spanish or US influence.
Sancho calls itself a taqueria and tequileria, but the menu is both more varied and more personal than that subtitle suggests. First up are New Mexican sopaipillas (puffy fried pastry dough). Typically served as a starter with chilli honey for dipping, here they’re accompanied by red and green salsa. Pinto beans, corn and butternut pumpkin – all crucial to Native American agriculture in New Mexico – are present across the menu. But the full trio comes together in a dish developed by head chef Julius Villamor (ex-Baja) called the Three Sisters, featuring roasted pumpkin mole, bean hummus and chilli crisp, served with tortilla chips.
Photo: Fergus Hurst
Sorai, Carina
Burmese food is relatively hard to find in Brisbane, despite our sizeable Myanmar-born community. The cuisine has been largely confined to stalls at the Global Food Markets in Woodridge and Kelvin Grove Village Market (Slurp Burmese), with bricks-and-mortar restaurants notably absent.
That changed in late June when Warisan’s Alfie Musthafa partnered with three Myanmar-born friends – Laga “Bosco” Htoi, Min Hein Kyaw and Su Sabai Zaw – to open Sorai, a homestyle Burmese restaurant in Carina.
The menu leans towards homey, traditional Burmese cooking, which typically features pickled vegetables, curries, salads and rice and noodle dishes. The lahpet thoke, a salad of fermented tea leaves, is a standout. The team seasons and marinates the tea leaves, before tossing them with cabbage, tomato, crunchy soybeans, peanuts and crispy garlic. It’s a fresh, deeply savoury salad packed with texture. Other specialties include mohinga, Myanmar’s national dish of fish noodle soup; Burmese chicken curry; and a kyaw sone, an assorted fritter platter featuring house-made tofu, onion, winter melon and potato served with a tamarind dipping sauce. There are also a handful of familiar Thai and Indonesian dishes, including pad thai, beef massaman and mie goreng.
To drink, there’s Burmese milk tea, a couple of Felons beers on tap and a concise cocktail list including a Mango Sticky Rice Pina Colada.
Reporting by Alex Mitcheson, Elliot Baker and Kit Kreiwaldt.