We had another lighter breakfast today and then we hopped on a bus over to the city and found the bus to travel to “The Summit” at the Mount Coot-tha Lookout.
Neither of us had been up Mount Coot-tha for many years and the restaurant is quite iconic. As the restaurant is in the Entertainment Book we thought we would have lunch and admire the view over Brisbane.
As I was looking up to see the menu and work out buses I came across news stories that announced that the restaurant is closing at the end of January after 36 years 🙁
Reading that news made it a no brainer visit. We had a lovely lunch of Pork Belly and Steak before sharing desserts or Panacotta and Chocolate Brownies.
200g Grass fed eye fillet Served w’ pan roasted chats, Dutch carrots, onion jam, spring greens, jus 
Pork belly w’ smokey pumpkin puree, braised cabbage, charred onion, pear gel
Sadly the view was not the best today. Even though we do not have fires within 50kms of Brisbane, there was still a lot of smoke in the air.
After the bus, we caught the bus back to the city and back “home”.
Once back in the apartment, we put a load of washing on and put it in the dryer and made our way up to the hotel pool and spa for a relaxing afternoon.
Our dinner plans were something a little different… At the restaurant at the Mantra, there is a “What’s On” Blackboard…
As you can imagine.. The Wednesday night “Flaming Cheese Wheel Pasta” aroused our curiosity. We asked and were told it is a half wheel of Grando Parmeganio cheese that has been hollowed out and pasta added. Apparently, it is all done at the table and has to be experienced. We thought we would give it a try.
We arrived at the restaurant and were shown to our table. Before long a trolley was brought out with the large wheel of cheese that had ( as previously explained) been hollowed out.
To create the dish, they flambe the inside of the cheese with Rose Water alcohol to make it all nice and “melty” before adding pre-cooked pasta (we chose carbonara). Rose Water alcohol does not flavour the cheese at all. The pasta was stirred through the cheese “bowl” and the bottom scraped to make sure we got all the molten bits.
The pasta and gorgeous sauce was pulled out of the cheese wheel and placed into a bowl, topped with more parmesan, crispy pancetta and copious amounts of cracked pepper.
The resulting dish was AMAZING!!!
This video is of the process being created for the lady sitting next to us..the same process was repeated for in front of us.
(sorry the sound is not great 🙁 )
If you have the chance to visit “Salt Meats Cheese” on a Wednesday night .. do try this. The theatre of the dish alone is worth it.
