I went to church to find one of Brisbane’s best independent restaurants

Brad Cooper will cook you a piece of fish. But he won’t just cook you a piece of fish.

Yes, there will be a fillet of goldband snapper – a relatively delicate, mildly flavoured piece of seafood. But there will also be shaved calamari, poached and then served in a profoundly rich shellfish butter. It’s bold cooking that grabs your attention and lives long in the memory.

Cooper himself is a mild sort of bloke.

For years he flew under the radar, cooking at Gauge in South Brisbane and then heading up the kitchen at Florence in Camp Hill. It wasn’t until Adrienne Jory and Rick Gibson opened Bar Francine in West End with Cooper onboard as chef that his cooking was suddenly thrust into the spotlight.

Broadly European in style, there was a playfully nostalgic and inventive edge to his menus, which explored old recipes and often overlooked proteins. Also, it was big on flavour – perhaps too big at times, depending on what you ordered. Either way, Bar Francine confirmed what a lot of industry folks already seemed to know – Cooper was one to watch.

August, Cooper’s first restaurant as owner, could’ve easily dialled those Francine-esque inclinations up to eleven. Instead, though, 18 months after opening, it finds the 32-year-old chef settling into a steady groove that balances boldness with restraint.

An 1888-built timber church on Dornoch Terrace is a fine setting for this more considered approach. It’s a cracker of a dining room, particularly over lunch when its stained-glass windows bend the changing light in beautiful, unexpected ways.

Cooper is known for his snacks so, once seated, we dutifully investigate them first.

Lamb croquettes with sheep’s yoghurt and mint jelly sound dangerous, but Cooper has lightened his protein by brining it and then braising it with sherry and mustard, and blitzed the crumb to produce an elegantly thin casing. A dollop of earthy, tangy yoghurt holds the thing to the plate, the jelly set in the fridge and laid on top. It’s a lesson in how great technique can help along even the simplest of dishes.

Beef tartare served on toasted baguette is more robust but just as tasty, Cooper taking grass-fed flank and lifting it with a bois boudran sauce and tarragon, dill and chervil, before sprinkling it with horse radish. Its lovely bright acidity is everything you want from an appetiser.

Among the smaller plates, a mud crab omelette Arnold Bennett is by now an August signature (it’s just left the menu but expect it to return later in the year). A take on the smoked haddock classic from the Savoy Hotel in London, it subs in local Hervey Bay mud crab and is finished in the grill with comte cheese to create the most luxuriant dish I tasted across two visits.

More dialled back is stracciatella served with celeriac that’s been roasted in white balsamic, the whole dish finished with a quince and pecan vinaigrette, and a sprinkle of caraway seeds. A beautifully presented, fragrant mix of sweetness and acid, this is autumn cooking at its best.

From the larger plates we order the snapper with calamari and shellfish butter. It pretty much sums up the skill of Cooper’s cooking in 2026, its interplay of flavours and texture a ballsy game of brinkmanship that never goes nuclear. We order some fries and dream of the seaside.

For drinks, Cooper’s partner (in business and life) Matilda Riek has designed such a well-balanced, engaging wine list that we breeze straight past the mixed drinks. It’s not yet on by the glass but the staff happily crack a 2021 bottle of Domaine Taupenot Merme bourgogne aligote for me to try, before I switch to a zesty catarratto from Sicilian producer Criante; my guest keeps it closer to home with the punchy minimality of a Strata riesling from south-west Victoria’s Crawford River. All are terrific.

To finish we share a brown sugar meringue with rhubarb, mascarpone and pistachio. It’s a variation on a longstanding fixture on the menu, and you can see why – it’s that rare sweet that eats as elegantly as it looks.

Service throughout is efficient and not without a gentle dash of personality, but also the confidence to know when to lean in or out.

And, a year and a half after it opened, confidence is perhaps what defines August. Cooper almost left the industry permanently around the time of the pandemic – you sense that for him to return and stay, there’s precious room for compromise. This little restaurant that could in an old church in West End is what happens when you have that realisation, and run with it.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.