Next Stop: Central Restaurant Brisbane

Central — a restaurant from the team behind Southside and Rick Shores — has recently opened in the Brisbane CBD (just down the road from our store on Queen Street). Serving some of Hong Kong's signature dishes and sitting in a beautifully brutalist subterranean space replete with an integrated ceiling light that looks like it came straight from Bruce Wayne's underground garage, Central restaurant in Brisbane does not disappoint.

A resident of the city for over half a decade, Randy Lai has spent much time sipping and supping his way through Hong Kong — often parlaying his culinary experiences into writing for various publications in Australia and Southeast Asia. Befitting then that we should shoot the long-time lifestyle journalist against the backdrop of Central in Brisbane: seen here wearing his newly made Cloakroom suit in Solbiati 'Art Du Lin' linen.

At Central, Randy observes that the exposed stonework interior of the restaurant recalls the towering concrete façades of the Hong Kong Island skyline and that the ear-to-ear soundtrack (Cantopop and Mandarin covers of '80s New Wave) cleverly echoes a precise moment in Hong Kong's history. Elsewhere, he notes that even the staff uniforms featured an artfully embroidered motif of the Bauhinia Flower, which has been the territorial symbol of Hong Kong since the city's days as a British colony.

But the real hero of Central is how the restaurant manages to create a perfect synergy between food and fit-out, where neither dominates the other. Testament to this is the floorplan that 'flips the script' as Randy says — placing diners in a ring-side configuration above an open kitchen, with chefs duking it out below on huge haunches of char siu pork, freshly prepared seafood and the Brisbane CBD's most comprehensive selection of dim sum.

Central is everything a restaurant should be. It is precise without being pretentious. It has theatre without trying to. The service is at once warm and professional. And, it sits perfectly betwixt formal and relaxed dining. In some small way, we like to think Central is a fitting reflection of Randy's suit — which is perfectly tailored without being fussy and sits somewhere between relaxed (on account of the fabric) and refined (on account of the peak lapels).