The Grand View Hotel reopens in Cleveland
This bayside classic has been redesigned with a new beer garden and a $2 million kitchen that includes a wood-burning oven and Josper rotisserie and grill. Take a look.
Don’t worry, Grand View Hotel is still Grand View Hotel.
You may wonder what happened to this bayside icon as you drive the requisite 45 minutes from the CBD towards Old Cleveland Road to witness its emergence after a 16-month renovation.
For every successful bar swap there are 10 bad ones. But surely not the two-storey “Grandy”, one of Queensland’s oldest continuously occupied hotels, with its distinctive brick and timber façade, lace iron railings and corrugated iron roof?
When you pull up to the bar on North Street, you’d be forgiven for wondering if it’s been renovated.
It looks more or less the same up front: The mustard yellow paint job is the same, and familiar palm trees line the path. Dr. from the street Walk into Bob’s public bar and you might encounter the same rusty regulars.
“You can draw a line down the middle of the bar,” says venue manager Richard Harrison. “The front bar, the games room, and the TAB are sort of a pub. And there’s a big food and drink bar here too.”
Harrison sits under the large, stunning pergola behind Grand View. It’s an airy open-air space, painted white and fitted with ceiling fans and modern pale wood furniture. Framed by towering trees, where the superstructure of the North Stradbroke Island ferry passes through distant greenery, it’s a pleasant spot for a sparkling or two.
At one end is a freestanding kitchen with a pizza oven and a sizeable Josper setup consisting of a rotisserie and grill.
Clever execution leaves the existing heritage-listed structure more or less completely separate (although construction on the kitchen had to be halted when the team uncovered a well dating back to the mid-19th century; it is now enclosed in glass and lit at night, acting as an eye-catching feature). But its owner, Kickon Group, operates both the Plow Inn on the South Bank and the Osbourne in Fortitude Valley in the city (among other venues in other cities) and the Continental Hotel at Sorrento on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is set to reopen in 2022 with such things shaping up in the regions.
“We’re not trying to make a plow,” Harrison says. “We’re not trying to do the Osbourne. This is Grand View. So if it needs a different offering, we’ll accommodate that. That’s a credit to our CEO and founder, Craig Shearer. He puts a lot of emphasis on the personality of the venue and caters to each venue’s needs.”
“It becomes much more enjoyable and rewarding to be a part of shaping what you and your staff do for local people.”
For food, expect the typical array of pub classics given a luxurious lick through the flames of the pizza oven, rotisserie and grill.
For seafood, there’s sesame-crusted calamari with wasabi aioli and fresh lemon; Moreton Bay bug rolls with cress, fresh lemon and Marie Rose sauce; a kilogram pot of mussels and your choice of sauce; and local king prawns served with cocktail sauce and fresh lemon. There are classics like chicken schnitzel that can be tricked out into parmi, and there’s a burger menu that includes a pumpkin and chickpea version, a steak sandwich served on Turkish bread, and a honey chipotle fried chicken burger.
Pizzas range from the classic margherita to spicy toppings with peppers and shrimp, pepperoni, ham and pineapple.
But the Josper layout is where you imagine the kitchen will see most of the action. Grand View bills its steakhouse as Australia’s largest, and the chicken is whole or half fried, and the bird also features on a roll on the burger menu.
Steaks range from 200 gram eye fillet to 300 gram rib fillet and 300 gram 120-day-old grain sirloin.
For drinks, there are 48 beer taps offering a mix of craft and big-name beers throughout the venue, a narrow 30-bottle wine list, and eight cocktails that split the difference between signature and classics.
Harrison says there’s more to do with adding extra shading near the pergola. But after 16 months of the doors being closed, you get the impression that Kickon can’t wait any longer to open them again.
“People here are relentless in their love for this place,” he says. “I was here moving the sprinklers at 7:30 in the morning and people were coming up and asking, ‘Are you open?’ they asked.
“But now they’re telling us they’re very happy to be back, which makes us happy, I guess.”
Open Mon-Thu 10:00-22:00, Fri-Sun 10:00-23:30.
49 North Street, Cleveland, (07) 3884 3000, gvh.com.au
Restaurant reviews, news, and the latest openings delivered to your inbox.
become a member
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at the Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-in-chief at Broadsheet Brisbane and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among others.
