La Boca Bar and Grill Brisbane

Overview

Already the home of Kabuki Teppanyaki, and enticing in travellers and locals alike, Brisbane's riverside Stamford Plaza has expanded its culinary range. Diners can now mix up their Japanese feasts with a trip to La Boca, the hotel's new Argentinian eatery that takes ample advantage of the site's prime CBD location.

As well as that riverfront perch, Argentinian grilling and cooking techniques are the star of the show at La Boca Bar and Grill, which also joins sibling venues in Sydney and Adelaide. At Brisbane's outpost, those South American culinary methods are unleashed upon local Queensland produce — much of which the ends up on the parrilla grill.

La Boca opened its doors over summer, and does breakfast, lunch and dinner service seven days a week — all with that Argentina-meets-Australia blend. Here, you can pair short ribs with pecan- and toffee-stuffed dessert empanadas, and sip Argentinian sangria and mango chilli margaritas. Or, opt for grilled octopus with potato salad, a half-split grilled spring chicken, and burnt Basque cheesecake with strawberry gelato.

The lunch lineup heroes sweet corn and cheese empanadas, grilled chorizo in chargrilled flatbread topped with pico de gallo salsa, and wagyu rump with truffle fries. Come dinner, seafood is a hefty focus, including Moreton Bay bugs with paprika and garlic, and grilled rock lobster with butter and lime. Or, there's a citrus-heavy red emperor dish, and two barramundi options.

Also a highlight: the asador menu, where you can choose your pick of meat — pork belly, dry-aged lamb shoulder, wagyu shoulder blade and grain-fed scotch fillet — to be slow-cooked over the wood fire pit.

And, La Boca also does meat- and seafood-stacked platters to share (one including asador dishes and saltbush lamb sausages, the other mixing the ocean's finest in chilled and parrilla-grilled forms), serves up Australian and Argentinian wines, and features orange espresso cocktails and roasted sugarcane daiquiris among its drinks selection.