Water StKitchen

Since 2017, this Water Street dining room has made the case that Bundaberg's produce deserves a serious kitchen. The cooking is seasonal modern Australian and deliberately unshowy, described by the kitchen as bare to the bone, and built around the farmers, fishers and small-scale growers of a region that supplies a large share of Queensland's fruit and vegetables. The room is light and unfussy, floral wallpaper and fresh flowers rather than white tablecloths, and the format shifts through the week: breakfast at weekends, lunch and dinner Wednesday through Saturday. It has become the address locals suggest for an occasion, and one of the few in the city taking a paddock-to-plate line beyond the marketing sense of the phrase. Bookings are worth making.