Trip 1: March 13-15

Day One: Friday

The purpose for this trip was to see Le Petit Chef

I found out about the Brisbane run for Le Petit Chef when I was looking for places to dine in Hobart last Christmas Le Petit Chef had just finished its run in Hobart and there was a banner on the site saying “See you soon in Brisbane in 2026”

We had seen video about Le Petit Chef on TV quite some time ago and knew it would be lots of fun.  Looking it up I found that it started in Brisbane in early March, which was perfect for us as M‘s birthday is the middle of March so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Le Petit Chef is an animated 3D projection onto the table in front of you whereby the little chef creates the dish and then the real life version is served to you. so much fun.

We decided to make a full weekend of it and checked in for Friday night and Saturday night at the Hyatt Regency (which used to be called Lennon’s)  we chose the Hyatt as that is where Le Petit Chef was running and we figured it was just as easy to be in the hotel as to try and find our way back to a hotel after a big meal.

Normally, when we are in Brisbane, we choose to have a one bedroom apartment at the at the Mantra on Southbank. I have mentioned before on this blog that we do usually prefer apartment accommodation as we both like a cooked breakfast and buffet breakfast tend to not start until later in the morning, well after the time we normally have breakfast and I do have an issue with paying $20 for two poached eggs on toast.😀

When I looked at the accommodation prices for the Hyatt, I was presently surprised that I could actually get bed and buffet breakfast for the same price as one bedroom apartment at the Mantra so we thought why not let’s give it a go, after all, it was only two nights.

We left work at midday went home got tidied up, had a light lunch and we were on the road by about 1 o’clock.

Check in at the Hyatt was not until 3 o’clock. We had a good run down highway and arrived in the city at about 2:45.

I was a little nervous about driving to the Hyatt as it is in the Queen Street mall this meant the access for the valet parking is in Burnett Lane, which runs off the Albert Street section of the mall.

Luckily, M had driven into Burnett Lane before and was able to tell me exactly where to go.  I had also watched this video of the entry.

It actually ended up being not too bad.

The helpful staff valet parked our car, and we went to the check-in desk.
We were told that our room was ready.

We got to our city view room on the 14th floor and was pleasantly surprised.
The room was quite large and the layout of the wardrobe/vanity/bathroom made the room feel open and airy.

After unpacking our bags, we went back downstairs to find where we might have dinner tonight.

I was planning on going to the new star Casino complex and having dinner there and watch the sun set over the river from the sky deck.

This was not to be as the skies greyed over and it started raining.

We had a look at the menu for the Lennon‘s bar and restaurant and decided it looked really good and they had a lobster special 😍 so we booked in for dinner for 6 PM.

We went for a walk through the Queen St., Mall and back up Burnett Lane. The corner of Burnett Lane and Albert Street is a very handy Coles supermarket .
I needed to buy a small bottle of milk as I really do not like the UHT milk that most hotels supply .

We managed to stay dry before returning to the Hyatt and getting changed for dinner.

We were still a bit early, so we thought we would have a look at the pool deck and the accompanying Hibiscus Bar as it may be somewhere we could have a late lunch tomorrow.

The pool deck and bar is a lovely space and we could see it would be really nice whiling and afternoon away in the sun.

They do have quite a nice little snacks menu and we thought yes that could be somewhere to come for lunch.

Before dinner, we sat in the lounge bar for some pre-dinner drinks.

As part of our room package, we were given two drinks vouchers. I chose to have a Prosecco and M chose a Chardonnay. After having a few sips, he decided he really did not enjoy the Chardonnay and decided to go to the bar and order a Sauvignon Blanc. He was of course happy to pay for another drink, but they insisted that he had not had much of the Chardonnay and would not charge him for the second drink.

After our drinks, we moved into the dining room for dinner.

And what a dinner it was We had half a lobster each serve served with chips and salad. M had lobster mornay, and I had mine with garlic butter.

After our mains M chose a mango and coconut cheesecake and I had a cheese platter to finish off the meal.

Thoroughly satisfied, we made our way back up to the room, watched a bit of TV and had a fairly early night.

Day Two: Saturday

We both slept very soundly thanks to nice cool air-conditioning and excellent block out curtains.

After cups of tea and coffee and showers, we made our way back down to the restaurant for the buffet breakfast.

We were showing to a table and were told that it was barista service and what kind of hot drink would we like? M chose to have a cappuccino and I had a pot of tea.

It was a very comprehensive buffet with everything from fresh fruit, Yogurts and muesli’s, cold meats, cheeses and various cereals

Moving around to the hot food stations, there was roasted mushrooms, two different types of sausage, sausages, bacon, hashbrowns, and baked beans as well as asian dumplings and congee, which is a rice porridge.

The hot food bar continued around the corner, where there was fried eggs, served two ways, both sunny side up and over easy there was also a big basket of boiled eggs and are cooked to order omelette station, where the chef would cook you whatever combination you desired

Also on the hot bar was pancakes and waffles with whipped cream and a selection of syrups.

Rounding out the buffet , was a huge table with a large selection of breads, crumpets, muffins, bagels, and pastries. There was also a large tray full of little pots of jam, as well as bowls of butter, margarine, peanut butter, vegemite, and honey.

We were certainly not about to go hungry.

We had a leisurely breakfast and decided that we would go to the star casino today to have a look as the weather seemed to have signed up well.

Before we went back up to our room, we asked them at the bar what we needed to do for tonight’s Le Petit Chef dinner.

We were told to meet here in the lounge bar at around 4:30 and we would be seated in the private dining room ready for our 5 PM start.

We left the Hyatt and made our way to the star Casino complex just a short walk up George St.

It certainly is quite an impressive complex with a huge plant filled atrium that sores to a height of seven stories.

Making our way to the lifts, we had planned on going straight to the 23rd floor to see the sky deck however, once in the lift we found a sign that said level seven was the leisure deck so we thought we would have a look.

The leisure deck turned out to be almost the entire roof area of the central complex covered in terraced artificial grass areas as well as a huge LED screen for sports and movies.

In others were marquee tents, where they could install pop-up kitchens and bars.

We are quite sure there will be many functions, taking advantage of this great public space.

Back down in the lift, we needed to get off at level four to make our way to the lift up to the 23rd floor.

The sky deck really is something to behold the view up and down. The river is fabulous. There are lots of restaurants and bars, but mostly the restaurants are just bar snacks.

Around the edge of the deck, are glass panels that if you are brave enough, you can stand on and look down the entire 23 floors to the roadway below. I did not.

We spent a fair bit of time walking and looking at the great views and had a drink at one of the bars.

After our big breakfast, we had decided that we really did not need lunch at all especially as we were having dinner at just 5 o’clock.

Back into the lift and back down to level four, we looked around as this is the level where many of the restaurants are.

On this level is also the access to the new Neville Bonner Bridge, which is a walking bridge over to Southbank.

We still had some time to fill in before needing to go back to the hotel for dinner so so we made our way down to the North Quay ferry terminal and caught the City Cat up to St. Lucia, back the other way to North Shore and then back into the city.  It is always a pleasant way to fill in some time.

Back to the hotel for showers and get changed for dinner.

We had a pre-dinner drink before being shown to our table as there was just the two of us we knew we would be sharing with another couple.

They were a lovely couple from Brisbane and the dinner was a surprise for the wife. She had no idea what it was all about so she was in for a pleasant surprise.

The menu looked good

Wow, what can I say about Le Petit Chef – if you ever get a chance to see this show, I highly recommend it not only was the show really entertaining but the meal was just superb. I did not take photos of each course as I did not want to be “that person”and I was pleasantly surprised to see that very few people had their phones out.

I found this video on You Tube.

Although we had five courses, we were neither hungry or over full at the end of the meal. The serving sizes were really good.

We got back to our room at about 8:30 and went to bed feeling very satisfied after having a brilliant day.

Day Three : Sunday

Although check out today was not until 11 o’clock. We did not plan on staying around that long being a Sunday, most of the shops are open until 10 o’clock anyway.

We made our way downstairs for another breakfast.

After breakfast, we wanted to have a look at how you would get to the level four Hibiscus Deck if you are not staying at the hotel.

We went to level four and then found another lift on the Queen Street side of the building. It appeared this was a public entrance.

In the lift, there was only a button for the Hibiscus restaurant and bar and then a button labeled Q for the Queen St. Mall and then LG for shops

Curious, we decided to go to LG.   We did get a big surprise when the lift doors opened, and we were in the middle of the Dymock’s bookstore.

We looked around the shop, (which is huge) before taking the escalator back up to the Queen St., Mall.

We had another look around before going back to the hotel and packing our bags ready to check out.

In the lift on the way back down to reception, M recognized the man in the lift as the valet parking attendant.

We had a laugh about it and the man said he would arrange to collect our car and it would be ready for us as soon as we were ready to leave.

Check out when smoothly and we made our way down to the Burnett Lane level and sure enough our car was waiting for us.  We were given bottles of water for our trip home.

A smooth trip home and we were back on the coast just after lunchtime.

Overall, we were super impressed with the Hyatt Regency and will definitely be staying there again.