On my last day traveling in Australia, I go looking for Brooklyn in Brisbane, an Australian city where the hottest new(ish) food trend is New York-themed everything.
I don’t live in New York or Brisbane, but I feel somewhat at home in both cities. My mum’s family is from Brisbane, and I lived in the city for a spell when I was a kid. I also spent four years in New York and now make regular pilgrimages back to the city to get decent bagels.
Australia has had a well-documented obsession with U.S. culture for a while now, but Brisbane’s admiration of New York, and particularly Brooklyn-themed restaurants, is a trend that's become more prevalent in the past couple of years. I want to know what the Southern hemisphere version of Brooklyn looks like and why the locals love New York.
Driving north from the Gold Coast, I start with a restaurant called Tribeca NYC. Queensland’s version of Tribeca lies on Chevron Island in Surfer’s Paradise—a gambling destination and gateway stop on the way to some of Australia’s best beaches.
Co-owned by brothers Brandon and Shannon Pollard, as well as their mother Carolyn Thompson, Tribeca NYC is part bar, part coffee shop, part late-night ribs destination.
Brandon, 40, spent a decade in Chicago playing minor league baseball, while Shannon, 37, competed in the pro surfing circuit. After their bodies could no longer accommodate athletic careers, and following stints working in various levels of hospitality, the brothers looked around for something else to do—and found New York.
Something about Tribeca clicked for Brandon when he spent time in the city — despite 10,000 miles of distance.
“Tribeca honestly almost feels like Chevron Island [in Surfer’s Paradise] because it has this real villagy, close, community sort of feel,” he said. “It’s got the cobblestone streets … the food and the nightlife is some of the best in the world. But it’s that sense of really tight thriving community that’s made it so attractive.”
Brandon (left) and Shannon Pollard at Tribeca NYC (Arielle Milkman / Gothamist)
Shannon, on the other hand, was most enthralled by New York’s famed tourist destinations. When I asked him what stuck when his brother took him to the city for the first time on a research trip, he said he loved Times Square and the new Yankee Stadium best.
“Brooklyn was sick too,” Brandon said. “Brooklyn’s got a lot of trendy stuff now.”
The brothers have just fed me their version of a bagel, which I eat enthusiastically. I’ve been traveling in Australia for a month, and haven’t touched a bagel in over 6 weeks.
This one is plain and toasted and comes with jam and cream cheese (I don’t have the heart to tell my hosts that jam on bagels is not really a very New York thing), and it’s sort of crisp, with a large hole in the middle.
Although it’s not fat and dense like offerings at my favorite New York joints, I’m impressed that in this land of toasted sandwiches and horrifically bad Mexican food, someone has managed to create something that is unmistakably a bagel.
The brothers refuse to tell me the name of their supplier — it’s top secret, they say. The goods come from a guy they know up in Brisbane—someone who uses only the best ingredients and does the whole process right—mixing and boiling and baking in the correct quantities.
The Pollards tried, initially, to introduce different kinds of bagels and bagel sandwiches to their customers but no one was having it. Regulars would come in and stubbornly order the plain bagel with jam, while onion and jalapeño bagels went stale in the kitchen.
The brothers chat calmly with their regulars when they come in, and although the interior is appropriately tiny and dimly lit—think black and exposed brick, bar stools inspired directly by De Niro’s Locanda Verde—it’s impossible to forget that a sunny beach is right outside, instead of piles of dirty snow cleverly concealing a foot of slush and dog shit.
“America is always three or four years ahead of where we are; we’re like America’s little brother, really,” Brandon said.
“All the ideas come out [in the U.S.] first,” Shannon added. “Everybody goes over there and just borrows the ideas and brings them back here and says, ‘Look what I made up!’” and then you go, ‘hang on, didn’t I see that in America three years ago?”
Brandon thinks that something about New York’s population density and history makes it a center for innovation and struggle. “Everybody [in New York] is striving to come up with the next big thing, where in Australia I suppose we’re a bit more chill, a bit more relaxed, and we just wait for all the good ideas to come to us,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the center of Brisbane, all the cool kids are in Brooklyn. I find my way to Red Hook, a micro-restaurant specializing in New York street food and operating out of one of the city’s many laneways (a laneway is kind of like an alley).
Red Hook owner Tom Sanceau, 37, a British transplant who has lived in Australia for the past eight years, designed his brand after spending a few days in the city and falling in love with Red Hook’s food truck scene.
This branding is a little bit subtle for the people of Brisbane, and he admits that most of his customers don’t really get it.
“People come in and say, ‘What the fuck’s Red Hook? Is it a red hook?’”
To add more New York signifiers, Sanceau makes sure his staff always play east coast hip hop: “Sometimes the guys put on west coast. I have to go slap them and say, ‘That’s not good enough — it’s east coast all the way,’” and he hosts Brooklyn-style block parties out of the space.
Red Hook’s menu boasts classic greasy spoon deals and international favorites that do a pretty good job of replicating New York’s gourmet locavore food truck style. Chef Nikhil Garg makes me a falafel burger stacked high with halloumi cheese (Australians are obsessed with the stuff), green peppers and onions, and a dense bun. It’s flavorful and intensely greasy, and it leaves me feeling terrible—just like home.
On one of the stools next to me, Jon McLean, 23, grudgingly reflects on Brisbane’s New York food trend. All the cool places in Brisbane, he tells me, are New York-themed.
Inside Red Hook, Australia (Arielle Milkman)
McLean said he has been disappointed in the past to see his country standing so firmly in the shadow of America, but he’s come to accept it.
It’s as if Australia and America are dating, but “it’s like we’re U.S.’s side chick, you know?” McClean said. “We’re not really on their radar too much, but we feel like we’re involved and that’s fair enough for us.”
Liam Haug, a bassist who plays in Brisbane band Mosman Alder, is nursing a hangover with a double cheeseburger, and he volunteers to show me Brooklyn Standard, a venue that proudly claims the title of Australia’s best live music bar.
Inside, the decor is much more brazenly obvious—and nondescriptly New York and Americana—than the other places I’ve visited. The Brooklyn Dodgers are here, as is Coors Beer. Brooklyn Standard also captures, perhaps better than anywhere else, New York’s reputation as America’s most gritty, lovable asshole of a city. The ‘No Parking’ signs are out in full force, as is the framed subway commercial suggesting that you basically have to be a masochistic idiot to raise a kid in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Brewery products aren’t on tap here or at Red Hook. The brand is massively popular in Australia, but Sanceau tells me there’s too much demand and not enough supply to import it reliably.
The drinks are expensive, the clientele perfectly tattooed, and everyone inside is white.
At my last stop, Boroughs of New York Pizza in Fortitude Valley, a neighborhood that holds Brisbane’s tiny Chinatown and some good underground music venues, I find something unexpected— a native New Yorker.
Jay Gunaratne, 45, grew up in Staten Island and spent a decade in New Jersey working in telecommunications before he and his wife decided to emigrate to Australia. While between jobs in Brisbane, Jay realized what was missing in his adopted city — a decent slice of New York pizza.
Now he has two locations in Brisbane, a different dish for every borough, plus cheese and an award-winning head chef imported from Italy.
The Bronx pizza has kalamata olives with pepperoni and chili, while the Staten Islander is topped with egg and jalepeño. This is not a Staten Island thing, but an Australian favorite.
Gunaratne shrugs: “Yeah, we made it up. Staten Island’s all about garbage, so it fit.”
Back when they opened, Gunaratne and his business partner even looked into importing water from New York (they ascribe to the theory that you can’t recreate New York pizza without the wholesome touch of New York City tap water)—but Australian quarantine wouldn’t let it into the country.
Gunaratne said Australians connect with his food because he serves up large, American-style portions. As for all those other New York places in Brisbane? They’re just imitators.
“There’s another guy doing a five boroughs place in Brisbane,” Gunaratne said. “I went there and I said, ‘Hey, have you ever been to New York?’ and he said, ‘No.’”
Arielle Milkman is a freelance writer based in Denver, CO. Follow her @amilkman
