From Cooloongatta to Cairns, Queensland is seeing a dining boom. The state is longer than most people remember. We drove the whole thing from the Gold Coast tot he Far North and ate accordingly. Like the tourism slogan of years past. Where else but Queensland.

The menu leans classic European with quiet Asian inflections running throughout. They're subtle enough so you might not notice until the third or fourth course, at which point you realise they have been there all along. Premium seafood sits alongside heritage breed proteins, Belgian chocolate desserts nod to Van Camp's origins without tipping into novelty.

Pale pink, with a barely there blush that Provence has made into something of a competitive sport. In the glass it smells like someone opened a window facing the sea.

At $48 it is, genuinely, one of the most difficult wines in Australia to argue against. One esteemed wine mind called it the best sub-$50 bottle in the country. They were not being silly.

The food is where Dempsey's training asserts itself. The menu is compact and changes with the seasons and with what's available locally.

The word prodigy gets used about young chefs so often it's lost most of its force, but Allen is a reasonable candidate for the real version of it.

The Meringandan does not have a chef's bar or a natural wine list or a seasonal tasting menu with a chef's note explaining the provenance of the soil. It has chicken parmigiana. It has bangers and mash.

...and something vaguely Alsatian going on. Provence via Perth, basically.

The six course tasting menu reads like a love letter to a fifty kilometre radius

Malbec is not here to be overthought. It wants fire, salt and something politely and properly charred. Ideally steak. Preferably outside. It is generous, unfussy and reliably a good time,

Lunch moves at its own pace, not slow for effect, just steady. Dishes land clean and exacting, vegetables leading more often than not, treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for proteins.

From Ningxia, along the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains where vineyards cling to the edge of desert and altitude does as much work as ambition, this is a Chardonnay that feels both fluent and slightly out of step, in the best possible way.

The best regional wine lists in Australia aren’t trying to compete with the cities. They’re doing something else.Tighter. More local. More personal.

25hours Hotel The Olympia doesn’t try to recreate that exactly, but it does something close enough to matter, tapping into that same looseness and giving it structure again.

The menu reads familiar at first. Dumplings, barbecue, seafood, fried rice, the kind of ordering muscle memory Sydney diners know well, but it doesn’t lean on nostalgia in the way you expect.

It’s got the look of a New York chophouse and the confidence of a footy player in a suit jacket and tie.

Utterly light, bright and crucially, only 8% ABV. Which means Aunt Joan can stay merry, engaged and upright well past the prawns.

A cosy, nostalgic drinking hole that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into someone’s gloriously curated living room. The sprawling verandah, communal tables, reclaimed jarrah and charcoal grills give it warmth without fuss.

The Little Plate might be bowing out after 13 years, but they’re definitely going out swinging. A splendid visit for a couple of hardened foodies who have very high expectations.

Just like the famous Mexican cactus juice that has had many of us cactus on the floor of a dive bar, the agave is harvested whole, cooked, crushed and allowed to ferment before being triple distilled.