GOMA Restaurant is the silent underdog in the Brisbane fine dining scene. It is almost hard to believe that a Good Food Guide two hat restaurant, which most people probably haven’t even heard of, is hiding in a corner of an art gallery.
The dining experience has an element of exclusivity to it with dinner service only offered on Friday and lunches from Wednesday to Sunday.
Overlooking the Brisbane River, the restaurant offers sweeping views of the city through the floor to ceiling windows. Polished concrete floors, hanging light bulbs, dark timber furnishings and white walls provide a clean and refined ambience.
The menu has a focus around locally sourced, sustainable and organic produce. Five and nine course tasting menus, with optional matched wines, showcase each of the major food groups of the ample à la carte menu. Highlights include the suckling pig with chestnut, Davidson plum and blood and fodder, the duck with cucumber, pear, watercress and malt and the trio of mutton – backstrap, belly and shoulder – with sorrel, sheep milk feta, saltbush and leek.
The tasting menus include a creative interpretation of an Old Fashioned cocktail as a palette cleanser.
Concluding the tasting menus is a signature dessert dish; the wattleseed custard with Daintree chocolate and vanilla curd. The custard is set directly onto the plate and covered with a layer of the chocolate and dotted with the vanilla curd, giving the illusion of a traditional dot painting.
The wines were matched well with the complex flavours from the dishes.
Service was excellent with the waitstaff knowledgable on each of the dishes’ components and back story. The menu is reasonably priced for the caliber of dishes.
It is exciting to experience a humble yet well-awarded restaurant in an unexpected location and it is hoped that word of its existence is spread.
GOMA Restaurant
Stanley Place, South Brisbane
07 3842 9916