Five Restaurants with Set Menus to Book for a Meal with Friends This Summer
From a cheap and cheerful Chinese spread to a decadent ten-course feast — all for under $100.
Five Restaurants with Set Menus to Book for a Meal with Friends This Summer
From a cheap and cheerful Chinese spread to a decadent ten-course feast — all for under $100.
Summer season is officially here — and that means it's time to gather the crew and celebrate in style. A set menu is a fun, super easy way to achieve this. Placing your faith in the will of the chef means you can waste less time um-ing and ah-ing and instead focus on catching up with your pals — that's what the season is all about, after all.
Choosing the venue — and menu — for your seasonal get-together depends a lot on what your crowd looks for on a night out. Posh nosh? Clever gourmet twists? Wine pairings? Comfort food and chilled vibes? Whatever you're in the mood for, we've put together a selection of five top-notch options that'll satisfy any clique without breaking the bank.
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Happy Boy is your slick, Chinese fix in the Valley. Seated either inside the post-industrial dining space or out on the leafy, fairy light-lit deck, you can enjoy twists on traditional Chinese cuisine with the chef’s banquet ($35 or $45 a head). Changing daily, it can include a la carte items like twice-cooked dry and sticky beef ribs in sweet sauce, fish slice drowned in Sichuan chilli broth or the special house-roasted duck fried rice with preserved vegetables. A top-notch boutique wine list is digitally projected over the bar — pretty swish — so ask for the evening’s pairings.
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Owner and chef of The Golden Pig, Katrina Ryan has fashioned dishes with an experimental edge. While the converted warehouse locale has a Scandi-chic simplicity, the flavours, by contrast, are complex. Start off with ma hor — sticky fried peanuts and coconut with pineapple — and end on a dessert of lemongrass tapioca, coconut sorbet, passionfruit and sesame crisp. In between, feast on meaty or vegan potsticker dumplings (named for the fried crunch at the bottom). Upgrading to the $70 banquet gets you a tasty scallop dish with ponzu, miso butter and paprika, as well as a rare beef salad with cherry tomatoes, pomelo, peanuts and ground roast rice.
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Want the gourmet standard of E’cco Bistro in a casual (read: affordable) setting? Well, that’s the concept behind newcomer The Terrace by E’cco, where you get quality fare for less. The ‘Feed Me’ six-course set menu offers a culinary journey across Southeast Asia for a neat $40 a head (or $55 for eight courses). You and your friends can share dishes like prawn toast, pork san choy bow or chicken karaage with pickled cucumber and fermented chilli. Moreover, The Terrace’s openair setting is perfect for taking in Brisbane’s balmy summer evenings as you finish with a tropical treat: ginger, coconut and caramel custard, perhaps?
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‘Popolo’ means ‘people’ in Italian — so spirited chat, good times and food sharing are the MO at this South Bank hotspot. The decor nods to Italian pop culture and the menu has a similar modern edge — hearty Italian classics have been tweaked for fine dining. Using locally sourced ingredients, the daily-changing ‘chef selezione’ menu offers a six-course Mediterranean indulgence with all your favourites, like burrata, ragu, tiramisu and pannacotta for $55 per person. Your feast can be matched with Australian and Italian wines and, to top it off, a view across the water toward the city lights.
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Appropriately named for its ethos of sensual indulgence, Libertine serves up utter decadence via a seven- ($65) or ten-course ($85) experience. Just say “I’m hungry” — conveniently, that’s also the name of the banquet — and they’ll do the rest. Within this lush, bordello-style bar and restaurant, you’ll find a feast fit for your poshest posse. The French-Vietnamese influence shows in dishes like the duck barbecue with spiced cherry crepes or the creme brulée du jour. The banquet offers a selection of the chef’s favourite dishes, and for an additional $33 per person, you’ll get exquisite French, Australian and New Zealand wine pairings. You’ve got the whole year ahead of you to be good — you deserve this.
Top image: The Terrace by E’cco
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