Australia Day 11: Brisbane, Yoghurt Bar and James Street Market

I realized I made my time in Brisbane sound extremely busy. It was but to be fair, in a place where time sometimes has a different meaning, you are not very very busy, it's more just that commuting takes up most of your day. I still had the mornings though and the first morning that I was there, I decided to take a walk at 7am to see what was open.


Well..not a super lot. The coffee places were already roasting and buzzing. On the way to find the Extract Coffee Bar, I stumbled upon this place, the Yoghurt Bar. Upon first sight, I was a little apprehensive at the tubs of yoghurt that looked like they may have been out for awhile. My curiousity overcame me though and I settled on a mango yoghurt where I could see swirls of fresh fruit.


The yoghurt had me at the first taste, it was that good. I'm really picky about yoghurt as well, preferring it to be natural (which is truly hard to find in Asia unless you make your own or are partial to Indian yoghurt which you Can find fresh) and sweet but not too sweet. This yoghurt was creamy, with a beautiful texture and the taste of the fresh fruit was just sublime.

It was so good, I came back the next day. And right before I had to get on a plane, I walked across the street from my hotel to the yoghurt bar and bought another small tub for a plane snack (I don't ever eat plane food, the salt gives me colic). Unfortunately, natural yoghurt has no preservatives and won't travel well at all (probably fortunate since otherwise I would have arrived home with buckets of the stuff).


If you ever go to Brisbane, do yourself a favour and try this place. You'll never look at yoghurt the same way again. I'm not sure exactly where it was but it was somewhere central on or parallel to Ann Street, right off Queen Street. Maybe one of the Australian readers will enlighten us about the exact address.


The other place that I just wanted to quickly mention, if you're ever in Brisbane and you want to have coffee in a snooty but stylish way (you know what I mean) and also want to see how the recent affluence of Brisbane has affected culinary life and shopping there, check out the James Street Market. This place reminded me of Palo Alto. I cannot say more how this store Wheel and Barrow is like Crate and Barrel, even the merchandise and packaging is the same.




Also, look at the little french bread section, I didn't take photos of the natural foods section but needless to say, this is a pricey place where you'll be paying A$5 for a mango (but it will have its origin written on the little placard) and A$48 for one small rack of lamb.