Is Brisbane still a ‘big country town’? That’s no bad thing, says restaurateur David Flynn

Welcome to CityChats, where Brisbane Times meets our city’s most interesting characters on our most iconic form of transport. This week south-east Queensland restaurateur David Flynn tells us why he loves the city’s “big country town” label and how Brisbane dining patterns are shifting.

We meet Flynn at the Howard Smith Wharves ferry terminal on an unseasonably warm September afternoon. He’s in a bubbly, buoyant mood, having just relaunched his Friends of Friends restaurant group alongside co-founders Nick Woodward and Frank Li.

Do you catch the CityCat to work often, David?

No, never, unfortunately. I really should.

Well, welcome. What’s your controversial Brisbane opinion?

I actually think winter is our best season. June to August, you know, clear blue skies, crisp mornings. Obviously, the sun doesn’t stay out as late, but it’s just the perfect weather for afternoon lunches.

Today’s beautiful, but it’s starting to heat up. It’s a bit sweaty.

I love summer, but maybe as I’m getting older as well, I really, really appreciate our winters.

What do you love about Brisbane, if you had to pick one thing?

I love the people, our attitude, how friendly we are; maybe it’s the “big country town” label that sort of feeds into that. But I actually think it’s a strength. If we are a big country town, then that’s great because we’re very welcoming, very friendly, look out for each other.

Maybe it’s the hot summers and the laid-back lifestyle as well. I just think we’re a very friendly, unpretentious bunch, and I hope we never lose that.

I know a musician in Melbourne – when he would tour and crash on people’s couches around Australia, he’s like, “If I didn’t know where I was, and I woke up in someone’s lounge room in Brisbane … that’s the one place I’d know where I was, because everyone has this particular friendliness.”

Yeah, they’re getting you a coffee, or maybe a beer.

Tell us the restaurants that you own.

In Brisbane, we have Southside and Marlowe, and Goodside over at South Brisbane, and then we have Central in the city, our subterranean dumpling bar. And then on the Gold Coast at Mermaid Beach, we have Norte and Sueño, a Latin American concept, and then Rick Shores at Burleigh Heads, which is our oldest venue.

And you’ve just launched a new brand called Friends of Friends for the restaurants. Tell us the story behind that.

We’ve never really had a proper name or a brand for the group. We had a working title [Fanda] that was just something that sprang up. But we wanted to.

Now that we’ve spent the last couple of years opening some new venues, we just felt like it was the right time to try and pull all the threads together, and also use it as a vehicle to tell some of the wonderful stories that exist around our businesses, particularly with people in our team.

We’ve got some amazing people that have been with us for years and years, some of whom are now partners in the businesses as well.

I guess the name reflects how we approach our business, in the sense that we want to work with people that we are happy to spend time with. Obviously, work can be hard and hospitality can be long hours and high pressure, but we genuinely enjoy creating venues that we want to spend time with, whether that’s as an operator or as a diner. We love dining at our own venues because we’ve, in a way, created them for ourselves.

Before boarding the CityCat, Flynn shared with us his thoughts on Brisbane’s traditionally backseat approach when it comes to dining. Rather than starting trends he felt the city waited to follow suit from our southern neighbours.

There are a lot of challenges in the hospitality industry at the moment. How do you feel? What’s the vibe around Brisbane hospitality in 2026?

I’m the eternal optimist, I think. But definitely the thing that I’m most optimistic about is tying back to what I said before about waiting for permission: operators in Brisbane, we’re really becoming more confident and more proud of our own offerings.

Whilst we also have some fantastic interstate operators who’ve opened venues up here, which I love, I think Brisbane has its own style that’s developing and our own way of doing things that really speaks to our lifestyle, our climate and how we approach even the spaces that we design.

In Brisbane, more and more people who maybe weren’t big diners are becoming more interested in dining. And so I think whilst there are challenges, I also think there’s a lot of people who are going to dine more in the coming years.

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