Eat Brisbane: A New Cookbook Celebrating the Diversity of the City’s Food Scene

Ever wanted to re-create Milquetoast ’s chip butty, 1889 Enoteca ’s spaghetti alla carbonara, or Ach ’s challah with hummus at home? Now you can.

Eat Brisbane is a new cookbook featuring recipes from 40 of the city’s most beloved restaurants, cafes, bars and food businesses. The project is the work of Shika Finnemore, who moved to Brisbane from London in 2018. She was inspired to highlight the city’s food scene after noticing it was being overshadowed by Melbourne and Sydney.

“Everyone would always ask me, ‘Have you gone down to Melbourne to try all the food?’ I’m like, ‘I haven’t even tried all the food in Brisbane,’” she tells Broadsheet. “I find a lot of food projects always only focus on other cities.

“We have a big growing population and being flanked by the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast, we get a lot of tourism coming through. We’ve got this wonderful base, but it’s not talked about enough.”

Eat Brisbane brings together recipes that reflect the diversity and creativity of the city’s hospitality community. There are comforting, approachable dishes alongside more technical recipes for confident home cooks. Venues were given free rein to choose the recipe they contributed and weren’t charged to be included.

“There are some well-known names in the book doing great things, but there are also many independently owned places in there that never get the limelight,” Finnemore says. “It was really important to tap into venues that have something unique to offer culturally, and to showcase that diversity.”

Finnemore, who works full-time in marketing, spent three years bringing the book to life, handling everything from the photography and design to the editing and recipe curation herself.

Eat Brisbane is now available to pre-order with copies expected to ship in late August. For each book sold in July and August, $1 will be donated to Dig In, a charity that helps feed Brisbane’s homeless and disadvantaged.

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