3 months ago
18
There are 32 taps, an extensive food menu and an on-site distillery from one of South Australia’s best gin producers. And that’s just the start.
Take Howard Smith Wharves, make it four times the size and stick it in the “middle of nowhere”, as one local hospitality operator put it to me.
You’d think that’s the play with Landers Pocket, given how much Artemus Group’s heaving riverside precinct has been mentioned in the lead-up to its opening, both by Landers Pocket and others.
Except it isn’t in the middle of nowhere.
Not according to Landers Pocket director James Cooper. And Cooper would know, being the brains behind Golf Central, the golf performance centre that sits on the same parcel of land on The Circuit, near Brisbane Airport.
“Yes, we’re close to the airport,” Cooper says. “But we have a lot of people travelling from the north or south along the Gateway to us.
“We see a lot of people coming from the west via the tunnels. We’re just 10 minutes from the city, and then we have a really great catchment of suburbs right on our doorstep.
“It was about five years ago we thought that there was an opportunity to really grow that hospitality piece.
“We were confident Brisbane needed a multifaceted destination where they could enjoy active hospitality.”
The first stage of the 16-hectare Landers Pocket is 4 Pines at Landers Pocket, which opened on Wednesday night.
An 800-person monster brewpub, it boasts 32 beer taps and an on-site distillery for Never Never, the South Australian gin and vodka producer.
“I’ve worked on a lot of big integrated golf and tourism resorts and you learn that everyone has their strengths, and you play to them,” Cooper says.
“4 Pines and Never Never are the best in the business, and 4 Pines and [owner] Asahi had seen what we’d been able to achieve with Golf Central, and understood our vision.”
The venue is an expansive open-air warehouse-style number overlooking the putt-putt course and driving range, the defining features its corrugated iron facade, and the heavy timber beaming that frames the internal dining and bar areas, and vaulted ceilings.
The main bar sits at one end of the venue, its five-hectolitre brew system slotted in behind it, and Never Never’s still to the right.
The bar is pouring 4 Pines’ core range along with two taps dedicated to rotating brews created in the on-site brewery. There are also classic cocktails and mixed drinks made with Never Never gin and vodka, and a relatively compact wine list that focuses on quality over quantity, with only a handful of drops drifting over the $100 mark.
The food is probably more brewpub than gastropub, despite how Landers Pocket has been describing it. Expect the usual mix of burgers, pizzas, starters such as calamari and Byron Bay burrata, and mains such as beer-battered fish and chips, chicken schnitzel and Moreton Bay bug and prawn pasta. It’s the kind of upmarket pub grub that helps turn a few beers into a proper session.
But this is all just the beginning. To follow the brewpub are padel courts, a play zone, a village green and a 3000-person amphitheatre. Golf Central’s car park has been quadrupled in size to accommodate the new business.
It’s ambitious stuff, but then Cooper says people thought he was mad to open Golf Central back in 2014.
“Starting a new business is always a roll of the dice,” he says.
“[But] we did our homework. When I first stepped on that parcel of land it was 17 hectares at the beginning of the airport. It was swamp land and you had to go through that wretched bloody roundabout to get there.
“So, yeah, some people thought I was mad but thankfully not everyone.”
Mon-Wed 11am-10pm, Thu-Sun 11am-11pm
40 The Circuit, Brisbane Airport
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