Breakfast Series - Cirque

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Au-Cirque/119059328152640

There are almost too many great breakfast places in Brisbane, but that is no excuse for me having never visited Cirque before.  I have known about this New Farm favourite for quite a while and had it on the list of 'perhaps one day' breakfast cafes for me to visit.  Well today was that day and I am rueing the lost time and lost breakfasts from ignoring this gem for so long.

I had heard all the tales about how hard it is to get into on the weekends and that often there is a long wait to be seated and if I am being honest, this plays a large part of why I had not been to date.  I simply hate waiting for breakfast.  SC and I had a cunning plan, we would set the alarm for an early start and get to Cirque just as it opened.  I sure am glad we did this because even though we got there a few minutes after opening time, there were already cyclists and people streaming in.  I've always had a thought that cyclists tend to flock to cafes that do great coffee and food, and they certainly were flocking in to Cirque.

We managed to score a seat right out the front of the serving area on some of the tiniest tables I have ever seen, I mean, these were small.  Not only were they small, but they were pretty close together as well.  I took this as a sign that Cirque was keen to squeeze as many customers into their cafe as possible.  We were warmly greeted and offered menus and had our drink orders taken and then set about deciding on what to have for breakfast.  It's not an expansive menu but it is a creative menu with a good mix of contemporary and traditional breakfast offerings.  This morning SC and I both felt like traditional breakfasts.

Bistro One Eleven - I just keep coming back

http://www.bistrooneeleven.com/

Everybody remembers their firsts;  their first kiss, their first love, their first <ahem>, well, you know what I mean.  As a food blogger, the restaurant of my very first blog also holds a very special place in my heart.  The angst of not really knowing how it would be received or even if it was any good; would people be interesting in what I had to say?  Did it even matter?  After eating out for many, many years and having friends and family tell me I should stop talking and start writing about my passion, I finally put 'pen to paper'.  My very first blog was about Bistro One Eleven and I remember it well and it was their third night open.

Fast forward eight months (has it really only been eight months?) and I am still blogging strong and still loving Bistro One Eleven.  It was my turn to select the venue for our quarterly leadership lunch and there was no other place that entered my consciousness to visit, it was always going to be this wonderful restaurant.  In the months since my last visit, Bistro One Eleven had been recognised as one of the best in the state by winning a coveted Brisbane Times Good Food Guide chefs hat, a just reward for the effort of the Bistro One Eleven team over the last eight months.

Owner Philip Johnson has put it all together; an amazing team; a fantastic location; a great concept and most of all now, a loyal following.  Never resting on his laurels,  Philip is always looking to improve the team and now has a brand new head chef Mathias Anderson, who returns to the fold after spending some time at Alfred & Constance (Mathias used to work at E'cco Bistro).  The philosophy at Bistro One Eleven is simple, take the very best of raw ingredients prepared well and served without complication.  In this respect Bistro One Eleven is a standout.

Kitchen Sanitarium - The Vegetarian Experience

http://www.kitchensanitarium.com.au/

Vegetarian food is not a cuisine that I normally willingly submit myself to.  I'll be honest, I love meat in all of its forms, beef, venison, duck, chicken the list could go on.  When you're onto a good thing, stick with it I say.  I have a lot of friends who are vegetarians though, and they are forever espousing the benefits of a pescetarian, vegetarian or even vegan  lifestyle.  

There is a vegetarian restaurant in the CBD that is a stone's throw away from the front of my building and coincidentally right next door to my favourite restaurant Esquire.  Kitchen Sanitarium seems to be one of the more popular restaurants in town for lunch and I was keen to figure out why, so when the opportunity came to have a team lunch to say goodbye to a colleague, we decided to check it out.  Originally there were going to be two very dedicated vegetarians coming along with us to lunch, but at the last minute this number was reduced to one.  We would have to rely on the expertise of SG to get us through the lunch as our guide.

Kitchen Sanitarium is perhaps the best known vegetarian restaurant in the CBD and is run by the Sanitarium company owned by the Seventh day Adventist Church, who are considered pioneers of the health food movement in Australia.  Sanitarium are best known Australia wide for their successful breakfast series and one of my perennial breakfast choices, Weet-bix!  I would be interested in how Kitchen Sanitarium would go as a restaurant and if my poor previous experiences with vegetarian food would be repeated.

Tonic Espresso + Bar - something a little bit different

http://tonicespresso.com.au/

Let me start off by saying, I am not a big drinker.  In fact, you could count on one hand the number of times I have been inebriated in the last decade.  Sure, I have a drink every now and then, but normally it's a vodka and lemonade or a 'girly' premixed vodka drink.

I often get invited out to have some drinks in different situations and normally find a lame way out of going along....   But when I was invited to come along and check out the latest offering from Tonic Espresso + Bar, I was intrigued enough to overcome my natural aversion to having a few drinks and check it out.

Tonic has a really interesting background and history, with an unusual journey to becoming a hip bar in the Valley.  Tonic is actually an architecture and design firm located in Hynes Street in Fortitude Valley who have been extremely creative with some spare space and transitioned it's garage into an Espresso bar.  The espresso bar started out as a way for locals to get their morning coffee fix and grew rapidly in popularity, so much so that it was extended with tables and seating inside and out!