Dundee's on the Waterfront

Coco's Restaurant
Pullman Cairns International
17 Abbott Street
Cairns, Qld 4870
Ph: (07) 4050-2101
Website


The first place where we ate was our hotel's in-house restaurant, Coco's Restaurant. We arrived in Cairns late-ish on our first night, and wanted something easy and close, so that we could rest up, ready for a big day of sightseeing and activities.

Background: Mocktail Foreground: Pornstar Martini - passionfruit, vanilla and pineapple, caramelised passionfruit, shot of prosecco

Normally I hate tackily-named cocktails, but I couldn't resist the Pornstar Martini, with its passionfruit, vanilla and pineapple, plus a bonus shot of prosecco. Cheers!

Chicken Penang Curry - chicken supreme, pumpkin, snow peas, cashew nuts & lemongrass scented rice - $33

Sandra had a simple but tasty chicken curry. It wasn't particularly spicy but had a nice rounded flavour.

I splashed out on the seafood buffet, ($83 per person, $63 for Le Club members). I have to say, I wasn't impressed with the seafood at all. The selection was small (just prawns, oysters and crab), and most disappointingly, most of the prawns weren't fresh. I only managed to find three decent ones. However, the buffet also had a wide selection of very good hot dishes and desserts, so it wasn't a total loss! I wouldn't go out of my way to do the buffet at Coco's, but it's not a bad option if you happen to be staying close by, and especially if you're eligible for that Le Club discount.

Seafood

Slow roast lamb shoulder, radish & potato puree and rosemary juice

Lemon ginger marinated chicken breast, pepper leak infused rice, wild rosella and lime sauce

Desserts!

Our room rate included breakfast, and the breakfast buffets were great! There was a wide array of fresh fruits, a DIY juice machine, yogurts, smoothies, pastries and breads, egg station, western and Asian hot food and more!

Breakfast buffet

Breakfast

The Raw Prawn
101 The Esplanade
Cairns, QLD 4870
Ph: (07) 4031-5400
Website


The Raw Prawn is a popular restaurant in a lively area of the city - it seems to get busy quickly; I'd recommend booking a table. They specialise in seafood, but also have meats, pastas, and Australian game meats. Sandra had a nice steak and chips (you can just see the chips in the below photo), and I had a lovely mixed seafood grill, with prawns, calamari, bugs and barramundi.

Mixed Seafood Grill - shelled prawns, split bugs, barramundi, calamari, served with smashed pineapple salsa & salad - $45.90

Dundee's
Harbour Lights
1 Marlin Parade
Cairns, QLD 4870
Ph: (07) 4051-0399
Website


Dundee's restaurant is a huge waterfront restaurant, which, like The Raw Prawn, offers the usual selection of seafood, meats, pastas and native meats. This is definitely a tourist restaurant, with menus in different languages and lots of big tour groups coming through. Don't let that put you off! Service was friendly and efficient, and the food was very good.

Oysters - $3.80 each

The serving of ribs was almost comically large, but so very tasty, with the basting of barbecue sauce and the chargrilled edges.

Pork Ribs - Hickory basted pork ribs with mixed leaf salad, fries & smokey BBQ dipping sauce - $45.00

I ordered the local tableland yabbies, and these were easily the best thing I ate on the whole trip! The yabbies were incredibly fresh and tender, served on a bed of flavourful seasoned rice, and coated in a delicious garlicky sauce. So good! I took my time eating this and made sure I got every last scrap of wonderful goodness. Possibly would fly back to Cairns just for this dish.

Garlic Yabbies - Local tableland yabbies oven roasted in garlic butter, served on seasoned rice - $46.50

Another night, we had dinner at Ochre (6/1 Marlin Parade, Cairns QLD, 4870), an upmarket restaurant that had lots of good online reviews. I've decided not to include any photos of the meal here, as it was extremely disappointing. It took a good hour for our food to come out, and unfortunately it wasn't worth the wait - the prawn and rice noodle in coconut laksa was very bland and served lukewarm. Sandra ordered the twice-cooked duck, which was nice enough, but totally didn't match the strongly-flavoured Brazilian rice and beans that it came with. Based on our experience here, I think you'd be better off at a restaurant that serves simpler cuisine (like The Raw Prawn or Dundee's).


Bagus Cafe
149 The Esplanade
Cairns, QLD 4870
Ph: 0425 371 151
Website


Speaking of simpler, tastier food... we had a great meal at Bagus Cafe. This one is a casual place, located a little further away from the main strip of shops, adjoining a youth hostel. They do traditional Indonesian food, and is run by a really friendly Indonesian uncle who makes the effort to chat to all the customers. (And he even patiently put up with my poor attempts to speak broken Malay/Indo to him!)

Bagus Cafe

Sate Ayam - $15, Spring Rolls, Ikan bakar (grilled fish) - $20

Night Market
71-75 The Esplanade
Cairns, QLD 4870
Website

The night market is a fun place to visit, with lots of stalls selling souvenirs, massages and so on. There are also some good food stalls around the front, selling fruit, juices, waffles and other snacky items.

Juice Stand

Waffle & Puff

We visited here after a big meal (at The Raw Prawn, actually), so unfortunately I was too full to do a full waffle with ice-cream. But I got some of these fab Delimanjoos (mini-fish shaped waffles filled with custard) to nibble on as we walked around.

Delimanjoo

Rusty's Market
57-89 Grafton Street
Cairns, QLD 4870
Ph: (07) 4040-2705
Website

We visited Rusty's Market one afternoon, and I think this was a wonderful antidote to the expensive restaurant food we had on the rest of the trip.

Rusty's Market

This is a proper market, with loads of fresh fruit and vegetable stalls. I loved wandering around the different stalls, and highly recommend visiting here if you're in Cairns. We also managed to find lots of exotic tropical fruit, (well, exotic to us, normal to locals), like jaboticaba, star apples, and black sapote, that we bought and took back to the hotel to try.

Rusty's

Chocolate pods! Star apples! Green papaya!

Lao stall

Sah fancy

Aibika

There are lots of food and drink stalls here, so we decided to stay for lunch, starting off with a couple of refreshing sugarcane juices. Normally I don't like sweet drinks, but there's just something about the heat and humidity that has me craving cold and sugary drinks. Maybe it's because the humidity reminds me of my beloved Malaysia and our love for all things containing condensed milk! (Speaking of which, there's a stall at Rusty's that only sells Vietnamese iced coffee - just hook it to my veins!)

Sugarcane Juice

Sandra had a pad thai, with spring roll and curry puff (and a bonus slice of watermelon), from the Thai stall...

Pad Thai

... whilst I got a plate from the Samoan truck. I'd never had Samoan food before, so was super excited to try it. I got this lunch plate so I could try a bunch of different things. It was only $10, and such a generous portion! There was barbecued pork and chicken, taro and taro leaves cooked in coconut milk, pumpkin, stir-fried green veggies and chop suey. I loved it!

Samoan plate

Gelocchio
9/93 The Esplanade
Cairns, QLD 4870
Ph: 0429 996 911
Website


Let's finish up with a little sweetness! Being a tourist town, there are dozens of chain ice-cream shops in Cairns, but Gelocchio is a little special. Making their own Italian-style gelato and icy-poles with fresh local ingredients, they're definitely worth seeking out.

Gelocchio flavours

Gelocchio gelato

Gelocchio Icy Poles

We visited twice on our short trip to Cairns - once for intensely magenta dragonfruit icy-poles, and another time for fabulous gelato. All the flavours we tried were excellent, with really clean and pure flavours. My favourite was the peanut butter - so peanutty, so delicious! I only wish we had the time (and appetite) to try more flavours.

Gelato! Left: soursop & dragonfruit Right: mango & peanut butter

Do you have a fave foodie destination in Cairns? Leave me your recommendations in the comments!

Cairns Reef Fleet Terminal

Well hello there! As I am currently freezing my bits off in Germany (-9 degrees earlier this week!), what better time than now to look back on our sunny Cairns holiday! Lots of photos in today's post.

Prawn Star Boat, near the pick-up point for our Seastar Great Barrier Reef tour

Back in October we took a little 4-night trip to Cairns - it was over the Football Grand Final weekend (that's a public holiday in Melbourne dontcha know), so we only had to take one day off work, but it still felt like a proper holiday. Woo-hoo! We managed to squeeze quite a lot into the short trip, so I'm splitting up the posts into "Sightseeing and Activities", and "Food". Today, sightseeing and activities!

We stayed at the Pullman International, which was conveniently located walking distance from the Reef Fleet Terminal, and Cairns city centre, with lots of restaurants and shopping nearby. I'm glad we chose this hotel - during our trip, we came across some other hotels that were a bit old or rundown, but the Pullman International was exactly what we wanted. It was nice and quiet, the staff were friendly, the rooms were comfortable, and the foyer was very impressive. It was lovely coming back to relax in air-conditioned comfort after big days exploring hot and humid Far North Queensland! (I'll tell you more about the food at the Pullman in my next Cairns post).

Pool at the Pullman International

One day, I splashed out on a relaxation massage at the in-house spa, Vie Spa. The treatment was great, and I loved that the post-treatment refreshment included a little scoop of delicious watermelon sorbet!

Post-Spa refreshment

In terms of sightseeing, a must was a visit to the Great Barrier Reef. Of course. We took a full-day tour with Seastar Cruises. We purposely picked this one as it was a smaller cruise, and it turned out to be a great choice! (In her pre-trip research, Sandra had seen lots of cruises that take huge groups to the major sights, which didn't seem appealing at all). The Seastar cruise took a small group of visitors, with lots of really knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff. Everything we needed was included - guided tours; snorkelling gear and wetsuits; the option to do a beginners scuba dive; a good lunch, coffee; tea and afternoon tea. We went to Michelmas Cay and Hastings Reef (both gorgeous!), and we saw heaps of great wildlife, including a sea turtle, lots of coral, fish, and (my favourite) giant clams!  I definitely recommend these guys!

Michelmas Cay

If you'd like to see some of the underwater fun and beautiful reef, check out this video that Sandra made. She bought a Go-Pro for the trip, and put together this great video with the footage that she took!



On another day, we did a rather epic Daintree Rainforest Tour, with Billy Tea Safaris. Like Seastar Cruises, Billy Tea Safaris is eco-focused, and do smaller tours, with a maximum of sixteen passengers per vehicle. (From memory, there were only eight in our group). We were picked up at 6:50am, and spent the day travelling through Port Douglas up to the Daintree region. The tour included a crocodile cruise on the Daintree River, a guided walk through the Daintree Rainforest, a big barbecue lunch, a swim in a fresh water creek, a visit to Cape Tribulation, plus lots of stops along the way for photos at some beautiful look-out points! We returned to Cairns, exhausted, at around 7:30pm. There were lots of other inclusions too - see their website for more details.

Raintree's Cafe, Mossman

The Daintree River

Cape Kimberley

The Daintree Rainforest

Palm trees at our lunch stop

Emmogen Creek - we swam here!

Tropical fruit tasting Back row: Black sapote, Jaboticaba, Banana Front row: Star apple, Papaya, Soursop

Cape Tribulation

The tour includes an optional stop at the Daintree Ice-Cream Company. It was funny, when we were getting close, our tour guide said: "Would anyone be interested in stopping off for ice-cream?", and both me and another lady yelled out at the same time: "YES!" Located within the Daintree rainforest itself, the Daintree Ice-Cream Company includes an organic fruit orchard, tropical garden, and the ice-cream shop itself.

Menu

They make unique local flavours using the tropical fruit from their orchard. When we visited, they had macadamia, yellow sapote, wattleseed and passionfruit.

Flavours

I'm pleased to say that the unusual tropical flavours weren't just a gimmick - the ice-cream was really, really good! All were creamy with very pure, distinct flavours. The wattleseed had a great toasty flavour (kinda like coffee), but my favourite was the macadamia. So delicious! It was a generous serving, but I savoured every last spoonful.

Ice-cream!

Wangetti

Sandra also made a great Go-Pro video from the day. Please enjoy!



On the final day of our trip, we went to Fitzroy Island. Fitzroy Island is an incredibly beautiful island, with rainforest and its own coral reef system. For daytrippers, there are lots of activities that you can do - snorkelling, paddle boarding, hiking and so on - but we used it as a chill day!

There are a few different options for getting to Fitzroy Island - we took the high-speed Thunderbolt, which goes at eighty kilometres per hour (you will get wet), and only takes thirty minutes from the Cairns Reef Fleet Terminal. It also turned out to be the party boat, playing AC/DC and The Offspring at maximum volume as we pulled out of Cairns.

Fitzroy Island

The beach right at the Jetty is very nice, but it's totally worth it to make the ten minute walk to Nudey Beach. (Not an actual nude beach). It's much quieter, and just so gorgeous! (Heads up - all of the beaches at Fitzroy island are coral beaches. Bring reef shoes and thick towels!)

Nudey Beach

View from my beach towel

Fitzroy Island

View from Fitzroy Island

Fitzroy Island

That was our trip to Cairns! It's a really gorgeous and special part of the world, and is so different from the south. I'm so glad we visited!

Have you visited Cairns or Far North Queensland before? Do you have any recommendations for fun things to do or great things to see? Hit me up in the comments!