Landers Pocket opens at Brisbane Airport
It features 32 taps, an extensive food menu and an on-site distillery from one of South Australia’s best gin producers. And this is just the beginning.
Take Howard Smith Wharves, make it four times bigger, and keep it “in the middle of nowhere,” as a local hospitality operator told me.
You’d think this was a play on Landers Pocket, given how much the Artemus Group’s riverside precinct had been mentioned leading up to its opening by both Landers Pocket and others.
But it’s not in the middle of nowhere. Not according to Landers Pocket director James Cooper. And Cooper knew this, as the brains behind Golf Central, the golf performance center on the same land at The Circuit near Brisbane Airport.
“Yes, we are close to the airport,” says Cooper. “But we’ve got a lot of people coming to us from the north or south along the Causeway. We’re seeing a lot of people coming from the west via the tunnels. “We’re only 10 minutes from the city and we’ve got a really great suburban area right on our doorstep.
“About five years ago we thought there was an opportunity to really grow this hospitality piece. We were confident that Brisbane needed a well-rounded destination where they could enjoy active hospitality.”
The first phase of the 16-hectare Landers Pocket is 4 Pines at Landers Pocket, which opened Wednesday night. The 800-seat monster beer bar features 32 beer taps and a distillery from South Australian gin and vodka producer Never Never.
“I’ve worked at many large integrated golf and tourism facilities, and you learn that everyone has their strengths and you play to them,” Cooper says. “4 Pines and Never Never ain’t the best in the business and 4 Pines and Never Never [owner] “Asahi had seen what we were able to achieve with Golf Central and understood our vision.”
The venue itself is a large open-air warehouse-style number overlooking the putting green and driving range; its defining features are its corrugated iron façade and the heavy timber beams and vaulted ceilings that frame the interior dining and bar areas.
The main bar is located at one end of the venue, with a five-hectolitre brewing system behind it and Never Never still to the right.
The bar fills out 4 Pines’ core lineup, with two taps dedicated to rotating brews created at the on-site brewery.
Despite how Landers Pocket describes it, the food is probably more brewpub than gastropub. 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 upscale pub grub that helps turn a few beers into a proper session.
But this is all just the beginning. To follow the beer bar, there are padel courts, a playground, a village green and a 3000-seat amphitheater. Golf Central’s existing car park has been quadrupled to accommodate the new business areas.
It’s ambitious, but Cooper says people thought he was crazy for opening Golf Central 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, it was 17 hectares at the beginning of the airport. It was a swamp, and to get there you had to go through that awful, goddamn intersection.
“So yeah, some people thought I was crazy, but thankfully not everyone was.”
Mon-Wed 11:00-22:00, Thu-Sun 11:00-23:00
40 Circuit, Brisbane Airport
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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.
