The Fish House - worth the drive to the Gold Coast

http://thefishhouse.com.au/

There are certain events that happen each year that signify the passing of the seasons.  The transition from the cooler months of winter to the perfect days of spring and summer are marked by one of our favourite events.  Each year in September, local, interstate and international artists compete in the Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin Beach.  Each year for ten days, some pretty amazing sculptures are dotted up and down the beach and foreshore.  It's one event on the calendar that is a must visit and this year was no different.

What was different about our 2014 visit was that we'd planned a little more carefully than normal and aligned a visit to one of the country's hottest restaurants.  Instead of jumping in the car and hoping to find a corner fish and chip shop open, we made a reservation at The Fish House at Burleigh Heads.  I guess we were still having fish and chips in spirit, but in reality, the plan was to dine in style.

There has been a lot said and written about The Fish House this year, mainly on the back of having amazing food and a reputation for service excellence.  It didn't hurt getting a second chefs hat in the Brisbane Times Good Food Guide and being ranked 74 in the Gourmet Travellers list of top 100 restaurants for 2014.  Owner Simon Gloftis has spent a long time in hospitality and had owned and run several successful cafes before achieving a life long dream and opening Hellenika at Nobbys Beach, itself a hatted restaurant.  With an obvious flair for creating memorable dining experiences, The Fish House is Simon's most successful restaurant to date.

It must be said that apart from our annual pilgrimage down to the Swell Festival, we are not regular beach bums, which in some ways is sacrilegious while living in South East Queensland.  We had a general idea where The Fish House was, but it was down to our trusty SatNav to get us to our destination.  It had been a bit of a crappy and overcast day when we'd left Brisbane for the coast, but by the time we pulled up at our park, just around the corner from the restaurant, there was nothing but blue sky's above.  A great sign for both lunch and our walk amongst the installation artwork that would come later.

Little Truffle Dining Room and Bar - A long way to drive for truffle.... but worth it

http://www.littletruffle.com.au/

We really wanted to hang out with our mates on Saturday night and have a nice dinner somewhere, but the plan was thrown askew once we found out that they would be 'baby sitting' on the Gold Coast.  TB's sister had just picked up a new puppy, a French Bulldog, and CITB had agreed to travel down to the coast and look after the little puppy for the weekend.  Not letting this deter us from hanging out and having a nice meal, we agreed to drive down to the coast for the night and have dinner locally.

I don't know too much about the Gold Coast dining scene, so I'd left the selection of restaurant up to TB, who received some advice about where to go from her sister.  We had established some ground rules for dinner though, it had to be close to the new puppy and it had to be a nice restaurant, one that we would be excited to visit.  

There are a handful of hatted restaurants on the coast and after considering and then discounting RockSalt modern dining, TB ended up booking Little Truffle dining room and bar.  I'd not heard of Little Truffle before, but after doing a little research on the interweb, I got quite excited about the choice.  You don't need to convince SC to visit any place where there is the prospect of getting some truffles, it's one her three favourite food groups (also included is duck fat and bacon).  It was on, a day trip to the Gold Coast for dinner!

Helm Surfers - A surprise packet on the Gold Coast

http://www.helmbarsurfers.com.au/

This has been a very cold and very wet winter so far and I have not enjoyed it at all.  So when I had the opportunity to head down to the Gold Coast to check out a new restaurant, Helm Bar and Bistro, I was pretty happy to leave Brisbane behind, for a few hours at least.  It's pretty amazing really, as cold and miserable as it can be in the Queensland capital, just sixty odd kilometres down the road is a completely different story.

We were pretty lucky really, it was one of the few weekends where the sun had been out and while it was still pretty cold, there is nothing worse than heading down to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast on a rainy day.  It has been ages since I last visited the Gold Coast, the glitz and glamour of the nation's holiday strip does nothing to excite me.  In fact the last time we went down we had a pretty disappointing meal at a (then) hatted restaurant.

I alway forget how easy it is to get to the Gold Coast nowadays, with a pretty good road that is going to get better once the fourth freeway lane opens up and traffic flows even better.  What I always forget though, is how painful the bottleneck is when you get off the Pacific Motorway and head towards The Spit, it was like a car park.  It was also pretty painful driving into Surfers as well, with heaps of roadworks and lots of crazy coast drivers.