It’s totally transformed the old A.E. Griffiths Service Station on Wickham Street – and just wait until you see the courtyard.
Let’s start with the courtyard. Because if La Bodega Fortitude Valley had nothing else going for it, it would at least have this beguiling open-air dining area.
Walk through the restaurant’s open roller-door entrance – set in the heritage-listed Spanish Mission-style frontage that began life in 1929 as the A.E. Griffiths Service Station – past its breeze-block-fronted bar and semi-open kitchen, take a right, a left, a right, and you’re there.
This is the best kind of hospitality space, with that sense of discovery and, with its high, blushed terracotta walls, a capacity to transport you a million miles away from Wickham Street out front.
It turns out, though, La Bodega does other things very well – in particular an unctuous, wallet-friendly take on Mexican street food that has won the hearts of locals, who regularly pack out the pocket-sized original East Brisbane restaurant. Sometimes, owners Anna Brobjer and Tim Glasson turn over its 45 seats five times a night.
You wonder: are these the much larger, better-equipped premises La Bodega always deserved? Brobjer doesn’t think so. Not exactly, anyway.
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“I don’t want to take away from East Brisbane,” she says. “We had some people reach out when we were going to move here, asking if we were closing up.
“I remember painting [that restaurant] and people would walk past and say: ‘Good luck, nothing ever works there.’ But it did work out. We did something for that community, but that community has done a lot for us.
“So we’re not walking away from that. That’s very important to me. Maybe it’s more that they can get access back to their local Mexican restaurant,” Brobjer says, referring to its popularity.
She and Glasson looked after much of the design and fitout of the Fortitude Valley restaurant themselves, painting the facade in that same eye-catching shade of terracotta, and building out the courtyard with booth seating, which accounts for most of La Bodega’s 120 seats.
The food is much the same as that in East Brisbane, with starters, tacos, plates and salads.
To begin, there’s fried chicken wings tossed in a chipotle sauce; chargrilled sweetcorn with queso, a house crema and smoked spice; and a three-cheese quesadilla with the house crema and a salsa roja dip.
Larger plates include a burrito (which you can order as a bowl), nachos and an enchilada, all of which are ordered with a protein of your choice.
Still, diners tend to flock to East Brisbane for the tacos, and chef Alejandra Mendoza’s beef birria tacos in particular, which have become a minor sensation on Instagram. Elsewhere, there are pork pibil, chicken, carne asada, fish and mushroom tacos, all served in gently heated Dona Cholita tortillas sourced from Murwillumbah (which Mexican-born Mendoza swears by).
The drinks menu is currently the same across both venues, and includes a tight mix of local and Mexican beer, wines with a funky, biodynamic angle, and a cocktail menu that leans heavily into twisted margaritas. But Glasson began his career as a barkeep and plans to use the larger bar in the Fortitude Valley restaurant to stock a wider range of spirits and introduce a jalapeno spritz, a couple of stirdowns, and some new boozy slushies.
“This whole thing started because we were getting approached by a different precinct, and they were pitching hard,” Brobjer says. “They kept slicing the rent, saying we could get out after one year, and eventually we thought that maybe we should sign.
“I thought: ‘Maybe I should look at what’s out there, and if we still want this other place after we’ve looked, fair.’ But that’s how I found this place. I woke up Tim and we were up doing a business plan until 3am. We called the leasing agents at 7am, and by 2pm, we’d put in an offer.
“It was meant to be.”
Open daily 11.30am-3pm, 5pm-late
608 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, 1300 836 077
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.
