Spirit House

20 Ninderry Rd, Yandina

There is a moment, somewhere between the car park and the first glimpse of the dining deck, when Spirit House does something to you. The light filters through the palms and the frangipanis. The sound of woks drifts from the kitchen. A tropical film-set takes your breath away — and you are twenty minutes from the Sunshine Coast and a long, long way from wherever you came from.

This is Spirit House in 2026: still the most transportive dining experience in Queensland, still unmistakably itself, and quietly in the middle of one of the most exciting chapters in its three-decade story.

The restaurant sits in Yandina, surrounded by lush tropical gardens that blur the boundary between Queensland hinterland and Southeast Asia. Guests dine on tiered decks among the palms, or in the Hong Sa Bar for a more casual share-plate experience, or in the private dining room where the kitchen cooks for just a handful at a table. Every setting carries the same spirit: that of a place that knows exactly what it is and makes no apologies for it.

At the heart of the kitchen is Tom Hitchcock, named Australia’s Chef of the Year in 2023 and still, by his own description, learning. Tom’s food is built on fermentation, fire, and an almost philosophical commitment to restraint. Every day’s menu is written from what arrives that morning — the fisherman’s catch, a grower’s harvest, a forager’s find. The result is a kitchen that changes daily but never loses its compass.

His signature dishes tell the story plainly: line-caught fish with tamarind caramel and burnt lime; wagyu short rib with green peppercorn and fermented rice; brown butter and kimchi fried rice that Tom calls, without hesitation, his death-row meal. These are dishes built with what he describes as focused intention — “You can taste when a plate has too many ideas in it,” he says. “It is like noise. The best food is focused.”

Alongside the restaurant, the Spirit House Cooking School runs classes every day — hands-on, generous, and taught with the same values that drive the kitchen. Guests learn to make the food they’ve just eaten, take the recipes home, and carry a piece of Spirit House with them. It is, in its way, the most effective marketing a restaurant has ever done.

Tom’s vision for the next chapter is ambitious: a fermentation lab on site, deeper producer partnerships, and collaborative dinners across Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. “There is so much talent outside the cities,” he says. “I want young chefs to know they can build a career here, surrounded by producers and community.”

Spirit House was founded by Helen and Peter Brierty. It has outlasted trends, economic cycles, and a pandemic that shuttered restaurants across the country. What it has never lost is the heartbeat Tom talks about — the one he inherited from those who built it and swears, every service, to keep alive.

Recreate Spirit House's

Leader Prawns

with Green Nahm Jim Beurre Blanc

Recipe in Flavours of Greater Noosa