Peregian Beach Hotel
In the small and unassuming Peregian Beach area (between Coolum and Noosa) you will find a bustling hotel with some really tasty food.
We ventured in pretty early on a Friday night and found the bar buzzing and only a few empty tables in the bistro section - so we nabbed one after grabbing a couple of beers.
The restaurant space itself is casual and cosy and you can still hear all the hustle - not to mention live music - coming from the bar area.
Onto the food!
The menu has a little something for everyone with wood-fired pizzas, fresh seafood and even some Asian-inspired mains.
After staring at the list for some time, we decided to order a bunch of tapas-style share plates - that way we get to taste more!
First off the rank was an antipasto board filled with focaccia, stuffed olives, pickled octopus, white anchovies and some shaved coppa.
It was all really delicious but the bread was over-salted for my tastes, especially considering most of the other food on the platter was pretty salty already.
To wash that down, we indulged in half a dozen tasty oysters. Despite so many attempts, we haven't been able to get any local or near-local oysters and these ones - like all the others we found - are from Coffin Bay.
Upping the spice ante was a plate of fire-roasted jalapeños with cream cheese, hazelnuts and honey. What I LOVED about these is that they weren't crumbed and fried so had a fresher flavour - and a serious kick!
Delving into the Asian realm of the menu, we tried the Kangaroo san choy-bow and it was amazing - a great alternative to pork in my opinion.
Sufficiently messy already, next up were some buffalo wings with banana ketchup. Not spicy but still saucy, the wing could have done without the batter found on the outside and focussed on the flavour a bit more.
This was all washed down (on my part) with a couple of the local craft beers on offer.
The food was a bit hit and miss in my opinion but I wouldn't mind coming back to try some of the pizzas I spied on my neighbour's tables.
