Sunshine Coast's best dining: where to eat on the Coast right now

The Sunshine Coast's dining scene divides between the premium casual of Noosa's Hastings Street and the accessible quality of the Mooloolaba Esplanade, supported by the hinterland farm-to-table dining of the Maleny and Montville cafes and restaurants that the agricultural hinterland makes authentically possible.

Noosa — Hastings Street and Thomas Street — the Noosa Heads restaurant strip (Locale, Wasabi, Sum Yung Guys, Bistro C) is the most consistently awarded restaurant concentration on the Sunshine Coast, with the village character, the beach proximity, and the food-literate Noosa permanent population creating the demand that supports consistently fine dining in a resort setting.

Mooloolaba Esplanade — the beachfront strip provides the accessible casual dining — Pacific Thai, Pier 33, The Coffee Club, and the fish and chip shops — that the beach holiday and the local population combine to support. The seafood, freshly caught from the Mooloolaba commercial fishing fleet, is the culinary advantage the Esplanade restaurants hold over the Noosa end of the market.

Eumundi and the hinterland farm-to-table — the Eumundi market food stalls, the Doonan rural restaurants, and the farm gate producers of the Blackall Range create the farm-to-table circuit that the Sunshine Coast's agricultural hinterland makes possible at a scale and authenticity that coastal resort dining rarely achieves without staging it.

Sunshine Coast Cellar Door — winery dining — the cluster of small wineries in the Nambour and Mapleton ranges (Bello Wine, Image Flat Cellars) provides the cellar door dining experience that the subtropical viticulture supports increasingly well as the warming climate extends the viable growing zone north beyond the conventional Granite Belt boundary.

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