10 To Try: New Restaurants, Cafes and Bars We Got Excited About in Summer

Sure, we’re all still sweating – but technically this is the final week of summer.

2025 was an incredibly strong year for new openings and 2026 looks set to follow suit. Over the last three-and-a-bit months, Queensland has scored 10 new restaurants, bars and cafes.

Here – in alphabetical order – are 10 venues to put on your radar.

The Alligator Club, Fortitude Valley

It’s hard to know where to look when you step inside The Alligator Club. There’s a giant disco ball and a display case housing a worn-out pair of owner Glenn Hosking’s brown alligator-skin boots. Look a little bit further and you’ll see the stage, which hosts musicians seven nights a week, until 3am every morning. There’s a quartet of beers on tap, alongside an eclectic wine list and – the advantage of a long backbar – an extensive range of spirits. The cocktail menu is divided between eight lesser-known classics and eight fruity creations, equally suited to the humid climates of New Orleans (the bar’s inspiration) and Brisbane. For a liquid dessert, try the Pandamn It. It’s Midori mixed with gin, green apple juice, pandan and orgeat syrup, and then topped with a vanilla foam.

Cibaria Noosa & Bar Capri, Noosa Heads

After conquering the Sydney hospitality scene, Alessandro and Anna Pavoni set their sights on Queensland. In December, they opened Cibaria Noosa – an offshoot of their Sydney venue – at the Elysium Noosa. The menu and the kitchen are divided up into a cruderia, cicchetteria, salumeria, antipasteria, bisteccheria, forneria, spaghetteria, contorneria and a pasticceria. All unified by the suffix -ria, the concept is based on an Italian piazza, where you’d move through a space visiting different eateries for different specialities. The 120-seat venue flows from Hastings Street out to the Elysium Noosa pool terrazzo with tables scattered throughout the space. 

Fountainhead Winehouse, Newstead

It’s not a wine store. It’s not a wine bar. It’s a winehouse. It's from LPO’s Dan Wilson and his friend Chris Banham is shaking up the stagnant wine shop scene. The pair have transformed a former storeroom into a personality-filled space that looks like a cross between a wine cellar and an ancient Roman living room.

There’s a changing list of wines by the glass, but guests can also buy a bottle to enjoy in-house or take away. Education is paramount, with the team poised to roll out bookable advice sessions and masterclasses with visiting winemakers. But with bottles coming in at entry-level price points, it’s not exclusionary or overly fancy.

The French Exit, Brisbane CBD

Transformative dining experiences are something the Anyday Group has become known for. Across its seven venues (Agnes, Bianca, Honto, Same Same, Los, Idle, Golden Avenue), there’s a strong sense of escapism that makes each one feel special. With The French Exit, it feels like you’re stepping into a bustling bistro in France.

All the Anyday boxes have been ticked. A Tamsin Johnson fit-out? Check. Hot chefs? Certainly – in the form of Brisbane-born executive chef John-Paul Fiechtner (ex-Le Chateaubriand, Paris) and head chef Ryan Carlson (formerly of Agnes). 

The menu goes long on French classics. There’s steak tartare with pommes gaufrettes; escargot; and a whole duck served à l’orange. There are also regional French dishes you don’t see as often – Toulouse sausage with peas à la Française, for example, or a decadent comté tart with spanner crab and vin jaune sauce.

Desserts follow suit: cooked-to-order madeleines and burnt butter whipped cream; crème brûlée; and profiteroles with hazelnut ganache, vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

Jane’s Deli, Coorparoo

Leaham Claydon and Jianne Jeoung of Coorparoo’s ever-popular Snug have expanded their reach with Jane’s Deli, a new grab-and-go joint, serving sandwiches, smoothies and St Ali coffee. 

The sandwiches offering includes mortadella with woodfired broccoli, romesco sauce, salsa verde and provolone on focaccia; hot-smoked salmon with honey gochujang, coriander kimchi and pickled cucumber; and a hot honey cheese toastie with slowly caramelised onion. But, the clear favourite is the Hainanese chicken sandwich on fluffy white bread, with spring onion and ginger sauce, salted cucumber and Mama Liu’s chilli crisp.

The shelves are lined with fresh produce, flowers, passata, chilli oil, Asian sauces, and preserves, while a fridge stocks cheese and charcuterie.

Kasem Sook Social, Fortitude Valley

With its colourful, retro fit-out, spinning vinyl and authentic Thai cooking, So What Stereo was undoubtedly one of 2025’s hottest new openings. It’s late-night alter-ego Kasem Sook Social opened in late November 2025. Kasem Sook Social sits somewhere between a bar and a music club with its own entrance out the back of the venue.

For the evening menu, Kasem Sook Social leans into contemporary takes on Thai flavours. There are tacos with a whole betel leaf and larb, alongside bread rolls stuffed with massaman pulled beef or hung lay pulled pork. Other dishes include So What Stereo favourites like beef boat noodles and chicken khao soi, alongside rad na (crispy egg noodles with gravy), crying tiger (charcoal-grilled beef with nahm jim jaew) and goong pao (charcoal-grilled prawns).

075 Pinsa Romana, New Farm

Pinsa is having a moment in Brisbane. It all started at Paddington’s now-closed La Pinsa, the city’s first pinseria. Beyond that, the dish has featured on menus at The Alligator Club, Doughcraft, La Lupa and Scugnizzi. So while pinsa isn’t new to Brisbane, no one is making it quite like 075 Pinsa Romana. 

That’s all down to the 800-kilogram Castelli oven. The handmade Roman oven was shipped by boat and then crane-lifted and forklifted into the venue. Michele Bei and his partner and co-owner Aleks Miletic, are shaping bubbly, high-hydration dough onto a rectangular tray and topping them with traditional flavours. There’s also suppli, a popular Roman street snack and the city’s answer to arancini. And you can BYO wine as long as you don’t mind drinking from a plastic cup. 075 Pinsa isn’t trying to be anything it’s not. They don’t want to be a restaurant, they don’t have delusions of grandeur. They just want to make a damn good pinsa. 

Shaman, Brisbane CBD

Despite our hot weather and love of rum, tropical bars are few and far between in Brisbane. Pete Hollands’s Shaman is changing that. It’s incredibly well hidden, down an alleyway with no street signage, down a flight of stairs, behind a large wooden door. The room is designed to envelope you, drawing your focus to little details like the slowly spinning wooden ceiling fans or the leadlight lampshades. Although there’s a large collection of rum and tequila on the backbar, there’s no laundry list of spirits to work through. Instead, there’s just a pamphlet offering a concise range of South American wines, exactly one beer (Estrella), and recommended rums and agave spirits. A 12-strong cocktail list strikes a balance between the familiar and the adventurous. There are Daiquiris, Margs, Old Fashioneds and retro recipes like the Fluffy Duck.

+ 81 Sushi Kappo, West End

After a two-month soft opening, 12-seat omakase restaurant + 81 Sushi Kappo opened in West End. Owned by Hisatake Kamori, +81 Sushi Kappo is the long-awaited sequel to Aizome Bar, which opened in late 2024. While he has opened restaurants in Japan before, this is his first in Australia – and it’s quite a debut. 

It’s a considered fit-out by designer Alexander Lotersztain with a dark, minimalist counter, dim lighting over diners and a sharper focus on the chefs at work, highlighting the theatre of the counter.

The menu doesn’t come cheap (it’s $450), but consider the CV of head chef Ikuo Kobayashi, who trained at Kyubey, a revered sushi spot in Ginza, Tokyo, before working at two-starred Sushi Kanesaka. For drinks, there’s a list of over 200 wines and around 100 different sakés, with pairing options available. Soon, the neo-cocktails head bartender Tony Huang pioneered at Aizome Bar will also be available as pairings.

Suum, Brisbane City

At the back of a small lobby off Charlotte Street is a heavy black door with a handle in the shape of the Korean symbol for suum, a verb which means to breathe. Inside, 16 diners sit shoulder-to-shoulder around a central concrete counter. Owner-operator Andy Choi and his team move around with spoons and tweezers, brushing sauces, garnishing plates and delivering dishes to guests. Choi’s training includes time at the three Michelin-starred Disfrutar in Barcelona and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in London – but Suum is his first restaurant in Australia.

Additional reporting by Elliot Baker, Kit Kriewaldt & Becca Wang.