When thinking of Italian dining, there are a heap of places around Brisbane that come to mind. I have a couple of favourites that I've visited many times over the years, my current favourite being Beccofino at Newstead (see post here). Beccofino is not the only Italian restaurant I've visited, there have been many, and in fact, Brisbane has a dearth of Italian restaurants (see my blog list here). There is one Italian restaurant though that I don't often think about, even though it is right under my nose (figuratively).
Vapiano has been in Brisbane for a quite a few years now and is a restaurant that I'd gone to a little bit when it first opened, mainly due to it's unique approach. Vapiano Brisbane is part of a much larger chain of restaurants which spans the globe and has outlets in Sydney and Melbourne as well as cities like New York and London. It stretches from Estonia to Brazil; Luxembourg to Mexico; South Korea to Kuwait - there are over 135 outlets around the world. Forty five of those restaurants are located in Germany. Germany you might ask? Yep, the very Italian restaurant Vapiano was created by a couple of guys from Germany and the first Vapiano opened its doors in Hamburg in 2002.
I remember when Vapiano first opened in Brisbane, it was actually kind of hard to get into, there were queues and fairly long wait times. Nowadays, the restaurant is busy but those halcyon days are long gone, swept up with the restaurant renaissance that has occurred in the last few years in our fair city. It had been a more than a few years since my last visit and I'd been meaning to get back to Vapiano and check it out for some time. We just needed the right opportunity and motivation, which we found when heading off to see Spamalot one Sunday evening - it seemed as if the stars had aligned and we found ourselves standing at the entrance in Albert Lane.
