Main Beach Delicatessen

During our fabulous, luxurious and rainy trip to the Gold Coast, we needed somewhere to stop for lunch. Food Bling provided the expertise I needed to find out about cute cafes on the Coast, so we chose the Main Beach Delicatessen for our lunchly requirements.

It's a small but perfectly formed little spot on ritzy Tedder Avenue (well, there's ritzy, and then there's ritzy, isn't there. There's ritzy like the Champs-Elysees in midwinter, covered with fairy lights, and then there's ritzy like Hastings St at Noosa or Tedder Avenue. The ritziest thing about it is probably the fact that the post office has its own little replica brick cottage with awnings) among the over-tanned dried-up old dragon ladies with their white/pastel twinsets and minidogs and enormous bug-eyed sunglasses and 30 grand's worth of showy yellow gold jewellery.

So having set the scene, the deli is amongst all this. A small oasis of sanity, if you will.

Along one wall is a cornucopia of the usual deli goodies, $60 bottles of truffle oil, squid ink pasta, fancy salts, a big range of T2 teas, fresh baguettes, those big orange tins of snails in brine (one of these days...), the real jars of goose fat and all the rest of it. In the cheese cabinet is some really top-quality stuff, including a massive slab of imported Pont L'Eveque for $90 per kilogram. Great, expensive cheeses. Totally worth it.

And for lunch? Well, they have some little tiny tables with little tiny stools and little tiny menus. Gorgeous. I ordered the risotto (remember, it was raining) with leek, peas and Grana Padano parmesan. Porkface had the linguine with bacon, chili and herbs. Both were excellent. They came out in these cool asymmetrical bowls. The risotto could have been a scrap firmer for my liking, but really, why nitpick? This lot make great grub and they take it seriously.

Over near the door (I noticed as leaving) they have a cute little cabinet full of tartlike cakelike goodies that would be just perfect with coffee too, if you weren't going for lunch.

I'm so pleased to have found such an awesome cafe on the Coast. Must return.