Shopping malls might be much better for dining these days, but not all are equal. We rank Brisbane’s largest from one to five.
The dodgy shopping centre food court is a thing of the past.
Or, if it still exists, it’s at least usually complemented by some quality alternative eateries, maybe in one of those la-di-da outdoor dining precincts with a playground, a water feature and those cool timber lounge chairs.
But not all shopping centres are equal – particularly the big dogs: your Garden Cities, Indooroopillys and Chermsides – which is odd when so much else of the experience tends to be pretty consistent.
Which is best? We wanted to find out, so over the past 12 months or so, we’ve spent more time than we probably should hanging around the city’s biggest suburban shopping centres to trial their eateries.
Before you ask: no, food-angled shopping centres like Market Square, Sunny Park et al. don’t count, nor does the CBD. This is the big suburban retail centres with a few anchor tenants like Myer or David Jones.
We found you can get something half decent to eat at all these places. Still, there was one clear winner.
5. Westfield Carindale
What are you doing, Carindale? This stalwart in the city’s south-east is a good shopping experience as far as malls go, but its food options lag the centres further up this list.
You’re never going to eat poorly here, but it’s dominated by what I call “astroturfers” – the chains that have picked up on a trending cuisine and done a certainly passable, very replicable, but not particularly exciting take on it: think Grill’d for burgers, Roll’d for Vietnamese, or Guzman y Gomez for Mexican.
But it is getting better. Yes, David’s Noodle & Hotpot is a chain, but it does very good malatang.
There’s Foster & Black and Cafe Halo for coffee, or Gong Cha for bubble tea.
There’s also a Cinnabon, which hit Australia like a hurricane a couple of years back with cinnamon scrolls that are legitimately better than most independents.
So, a pass mark, I guess. But there are better options in Brisbane when you want to shop and feed.
4. Indooroopilly Shopping Centre
Despite its fancy expansion in 2014, which added high-end retailers such as Scanlan Theodore, Aquila and Zimmermann, Indooroopilly Shopping Centre’s eating options remained pretty underwhelming for years.
But it was the first centre outside Sunnybank to get a Hakataya Ramen, and from there, it’s slowly become better and better.
Motto Motto, from Sonos owner William Liu, is always worth a shout (it has an outlet in a lot of shopping malls around the south-east) for fast-paced Japanese.
And the centre over-represents on specialty coffee, with both Foster & Black and Archer present and correct.
The gold, though, is on the ground floor, where there’s a Cinnabon and a David’s Noodle & Hot Pot.
Also, check out The Butcher’s Grill: little more than a grill-and-counter setup attached to Andrew’s Meats, its classic Angus beef burger – basically, a gussied up take on an old-school Australian barbecue burger (refreshing, in the face of the American-style onslaught) – has gone up in price recently, but is still one of the better value burgs around town.
3. Westfield North Lakes
If you tend to breeze through Westfield North Lakes just to get to Ikea, you’re missing out, because the centre boasts a stack of good food options.
Yes, there’s a TGI Fridays and an El Camino Cantina, and a whole lot of other phone-it-ins, but there are also a bunch of delicious alternatives: see Lanzhou Beef Noodle for hand-pulled Chinese noodle soup, Kinn for fast-paced, fragrant and wallet-friendly Thai, and Chicken Park for fried bird.
There’s also Smiling Dumplings and Noodles for, yep, dumplings and noodles, Bapboi for Korean barbecue, and the family run Ka-Chow Asian Kitchen for pan-south-east Asian.
No need to resort to Swedish meatballs here.
2. Westfield Chermside
Now we’re getting serious.
Chermside is the third-largest shopping mall in Australia and, since the addition of its outdoor dining precinct in 2017, has bulked up its food options to match.
There’s a bunch of good options here.
Try Momo for crisply fried Korean chicken, Kinn+Derm for legit Thai, and Hanok for Korean barbecue.
Also, Simone Presta and Carmine Guarino recently opened a second instalment of their terrific fast-paced Italian eatery Scugnizzi.
Elsewhere, there’s Archer, Foster & Black and Be Kalii for coffee; Yo-Bar for self-serve frozen yoghurt and acai; Hakataya for ramen; NYC Bagel Deli for stacked bagels; and David’s Noodle & Hotpot for malatang.
That’s just a taste of the independents (and smaller, quality chains), and then you have the big-box operators and fast food spots on top.
Taken altogether, it’s well pitched and impressive in its ambition and utility, particularly when you consider Chermside probably didn’t have to do this – it’s not like the surrounding suburb heaves with restaurants and cafes.
1. Westfield Mt Gravatt
Will any Brisbane shopping centre ever top Garden City for food? Probably not. And will anyone ever stop calling it Garden City? Again, probably not.
This huge shopping mall – the eighth-largest in the country – is the solar plexus of Brisbane’s multicultural southern suburbs, and that’s reflected in the giddy breadth of its food options.
It was already reasonably good before the centre opened its outside dining precinct in 2014. Then, on top of that, there’s the 8 Street Asian food precinct downstairs, plus a bunch of good spots scattered in between.
Where to start? The atrium at the top of the escalators at the north-western end of the centre is as good as any.
Here, your Oportos, McDonalds and KFCs sit alongside operators such as 1919 Lanzhou Beef Noodle, with its unctuous, spicy bowls of hand-pulled Chinese noods; New Shanghai and its lengthy menu of house-made dim sum; and Hokkaido, with its perfectly flaked baked cheese tarts.
Wander down one of the halls to the outside dining precinct and you could eat at Betty’s, Vapiano or Nando’s, or get classy yum cha at Yum Cha Cuisine, killer Malaysian (including one of the best char kway teows in town) at Ya Hoo Kitchen, or well-pitched sushi at Sushi Edo.
And then there’s 8 Street, a charming facsimile of the kind of food alley you might find in Bangkok or Hong Kong.
Here, there’s a bunch of hole-in-the-wall vendors serving malatang, chongqing noodles, ramen, bibimbap and more.
Scattered about other parts of the centre are a Hakataya Ramen, a Foster & Black and a David’s Master Pot malatang joint.
If you need to eat while you shop, Garden City is the spot.
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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.
