Aloria opens on Queen’s Wharf Sky Deck

Shane Mansfield remembers digging under his grandmother’s kitchen sink for jars of pickles. He was five, maybe six years old.

“It scared me a little bit at the time,” Mansfield says. “But as I got older, I realized what she was trying to do—trying to grab that vegetable or that ingredient and keep it in its prime.”

These days, Mansfield is about as far from grandma’s kitchen as you can get. Twenty-three storeys high on the Sky Deck at Queen’s Wharf, with the Brisbane River and South Bank over one shoulder and glitzy city offices and apartments towering over the other.

Marinating plays a big role at Aloria, where Mansfield is the executive chef (he also oversees the food at nearby Babblers and Cicada Blu).

The Star calls the restaurant the heavenly jewel in Queen’s Wharf’s crown – and it looks the part with its glass brick, cabinets full of wine and pink furniture – but Mansfield’s menu isn’t all gimmicks, deconstruction or anything flashy.

Instead, he follows his grandmother’s example in trying to present local produce at its best, whether through pickling, fermentation, aging or the simple application of wood fire or smoke.

“We have three pickle blends,” Mansfield says, pointing to a pile of jars displayed prominently on a low kitchen counter in front of a wood-burning parrilla grill made with ironbark, pecans and applewood. “We have a sweet Japanese blend, a neutral pickle blend, and my grandmother’s pickle blend.”

Aloria’s appetizer and entree menu includes dishes such as wood-roasted oysters with white soy emulsion; fried barra collar with fermented chillies, tamarind and smoked peanuts; fried tiger prawns with fermented chili oil; and chargrilled lamb brisket with carrot butter and pickled fennel with fermented blueberry sauce.

For the main course, you can order miso roasted cauliflower with roasted leeks, toasted yeast cream, The Falls Farm radishes and garlic butter; hay-aged duck breast with beetroot, goat’s curd, fermented garlic honey and neck sauce; and 90-day dry-aged bone-in tenderloin served with garlic confit and bone marrow sauce.

This menu neatly sums up Mansfield’s career to date, having worked under Philip Johnson at E’cco and Jason Atherton at the Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social and City Social in London, and then again in Australia at a locally sourced restaurant. specialty restaurants The Long Apron in Montville and Jana Restaurant & Bar in Newcastle.

“When you work somewhere like The Long Apron, you really work with local products,” he says. “I think it’s very important for a chef to work in regional restaurants because in the Hunter Valley and Newcastle, as well as The Long Apron, there was a big emphasis on using as much local produce as possible.”

Not that Aloria is without its beauties. There is a caviar service that features Anna Dutch Siberian and Black Pearl Oscietra caviar, as well as caviar and martinis.

There’s also a 270-bottle wine list curated by sommelier Damian Danaher (formerly of Bennelong and The Gidley in Sydney), which ranges from affordable local producers to some rare European bottles, including a 1982 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild Bordeaux that costs $20,599.

“It’s all about complementing the point of view,” says Mansfield. “The kitchen walkway is one of the best I’ve ever worked on—there’s a lot of theater there. But really it’s all about this place, which can’t be beat.”