I recently had the pleasure of spending 3.5 weeks in Kingscliff, visiting from the US (split my…read moretime between New York, San Francisco, and SoCal). Those metro areas are becoming saturated with juice bars and coffee shops, including many that are Aussie-inspired; now I totally understand why. They're trying to capture the magic I experienced at The Salt Mill, which nails it from lattes to avo toast to smoothie bowls. Most of my mornings started with a latte here (always satisfying), and I often supplemented with a filling bite after my morning workout. The avo toast is probably the best I've ever had, with a fantastic blend of spices (coriander!) and seeds adding a ton of flavor. The Coconut & Cacao açaí bowl with added peanut butter became my staple order, overflowing with goodness and tropical fruits. Even the chia pudding, paired with full-fat yogurt and some fruit compote (mango or raspberry) was a standout. Friendly faces, great vibes, excellent food, and a fantastic part of any day in Kingscliff.

After a walk a walk along the beach...yep...still the best coffee in Kingscliff…read moreGreat small menu

Cappuccino in the field, in this new spot, The Paddock literally. Set in the most natural, open…read moresetting you can imagine. The coffee van offers tasty treats, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Good natural inspired food and fresh veges from the shed. Nutritional drinks. Wood fired, oven baked pizza from their home made pizza oven. Well worth the stop on the road in/out on the Mullumbimby township. Friendly, chatty staff. Look for The Paddock on the open roadside on Argyle Street on the edge of town, you can't miss it. Guaranteed no noisy neighbours,

I'm always amazed when I find little gems like this one. We're in a fairly big motorhome so after a…read morequick look in town it was apparent that parking close to a breakfast spot wasn't on the cards. I'd noticed this place on the way in so thought I'd drive back out & give it a go, as I could park right out front. The lass serving was very attentive & listened to my coffee preferences. The result was one of the nicest coffees I've had. I also tried the breakfast roll on special & it was absolutely beautiful too. Definitely worth a try.

Just went for a drive out of the city and found this place - the Hummingbird special for lunch was…read moredelicious, and the coffee was really good too. The also have a wide range natural supplies.

Our Daily Bread Cafe is unlike any place I've ever been before! On our last stretch of drive headed…read moreback to Brisbane from Sydney and having not had any luck in other towns along the way, my husband and I were fiending for a solid meal after a couple nights of camping. Since Yelp is still beginning to take off in Australia, I had to use another site to find reviews on ODBC, most of which were good although they appeared to have recently had some issues with "rude staff." The reviews for the food, however, were largely positive and so we decided to stop in. The establishment itself is an old church which has remained mostly untouched. Built with solid wood featuring high ceilings and the typical old-fashioned church windows which remind me of the Baptist churches in "The South" of the States. While you wait for your food to be ready, you can mill around the back where there are racks of vintage clothes, dishes, furniture and various other interesting knick-knacks, all collected carefully and in pristine condition. Want to try something on? Step into the confessional booth-turned-fitting-room. Our Daily Bread Cafe did a brilliant job of utilizing all of the available space of this beautiful old building. There is even outside patio seating, which it was a beautiful day for. Onto the food! Unfortunately I did not take a photo of the menu and can't find one online anywhere, but this was a meal I could never forget. My husband and I both chose a bruschetta-type plate, in different styles. He selected a "Hawaiian" plate that had ham, pineapple and swiss cheese. I had the LOADED one. Chorizo, all kinds of capsicum, onion, cheese..... this thing was to die for. We both agreed this was some of the best food we'd had in almost 2 months of traveling. Although there's not much else to see in Broadwater, Our Daily Bread Cafe is certainly worth a stop!

Great food and coffee. Eclectic mix of bric-à-brac to browse through too…read more Definitely worth the stop.

Tucked away off the highway in Newrybar, this cute little historical village houses one of the best…read morekept culinary secrets. With amazing coffee, and a pork saddle I could make love to, lunch here on a summer's day is simply divine. Beautifully prepared food, sourced from local suppliers, you can really taste the difference. These aren't peas from a tin, but perfectly cooked garden fresh peas that burst with flavour. The street is full, the restaurant is busy, so I guess it's no secret after all. I've been meaning to come here for a while and am glad I made the trek. Check out the attached deli and bakery too if you have the time (make the time!)

The beautiful weatherboard cottage with big verandah and supersize windows set an airy and spacious…read morescene. We loved the relaxed and laidback country vibe of Harvest. In a way Harvest is quite similar to Three Blue Ducks, the restaurant we dined in on previous night, as they both source the freshest and best ingredients locally. If you have decided to come here, you are expected to pay more than elsewhere because of the care and love they have put into sourcing these fresh ingredients. We thought the quality of the food these two restaurants have provided were very similar. We have enjoyed the oysters, fish of the day for two, which was barramundi, and the grilled pumpkin and fermented onions. Harvest is perhaps slightly more creative with their flavours. However, we received much more professional and attentive service from Harvest. Harvest is definitely worth the drive from Byron Bay if you are prepared to pay more.

We stopped here for a blended family lunch after my step-brother swung by to catch up. This place…read morewon the "where do we go" lotto due to the online menu. One of the twins is an 'almost vegetarian'. She dislikes the taste and texture of about 95% of all meat. So finding a place that offers more veggie options than plain pasta, salad, or soup is always a bonus. The online menu had a veggie wrap with grilled and roasted vegetables, & a pesto aeoli. Sold. The place itself is nice with both al fresco (unavailable when we got there) and inside dining. It overlooks the river and the view is quite pleasant. We were quickly helped to a table and sat down to decide. Things went a little south at this point. The online menu didn't match up with the physical one and there was no veggie wrap! The other changes didn't matter so much but that was a biggie. However, they were willing to assemble one for us so problem solved. We then waited. And waited. And waited. The food came out in a very staggered fashion to the extent that despite initially waiting a number of people ended up fully finished before the last plate arrived. There's no excuse for that. If you run a restaurant, even if you've cut your staff down for the off-season, you have to be able to serve the table in a timely fashion. The last dish was the soup special too. I would have expected that to be among the first. We speculated that they'd either forgotten the dish or run out and needed to cook more - but with no actual communication from our server we're still not sure. Service issues aside, the staff were very friendly. And the mains were delicious. Youngest ate nachos - an experience for her as she's used to Cali-Mex! Cheese corn chips as a base are, I think, an Australian thing :D There was a copious serving of chilli and healthy dollops of sour cream and guac. No salsa to her surprise but definitely very tasty. Erin had the special - chicken and creamed corn soup. She's become enamoured of this while in Australia. This one was apparently thick, hearty, and very flavourful. Briannah's whipped up wrap vanished - aside from the grilled eggplant. Not her thing. The wrap was stuffed with various veggies and slathered with a very tasty pesto aeoli. I had fish and chips! Barramundi to be precise. I miss Aussie fish and chips badly. Apart from anything else, it's harder to find a crappy serve! This one was beautiful. Fresh flaky barra coated in a very light and crispy batter. No soggy, gluggy, doughy batter here, thanks very much! And, as with all the dishes bar the nachos which were huge, it was a perfect size. Room for a treat afterwards. Everyone else had burger things - open steak sandwich es, open beef burgers, open Turkish sandwiches. No idea on the particulars of each aside from they were delicious and disappeared quickly. We did go for dessert. I wanted to like my dessert so much - passionfruit cheesecake - but I couldn't. It looked fantastic however it was a little stale and the passionfruit topping was dried out and had too much gelatin. Very rubbery. The coffee & macadamia cream cake looked gorgeous. It had a butter cream coffee icing studded with macadamia nuts. Unfortunately it had been chilled and the butter cream was very hard. Butter fresh from the coldest part of the fridge hard. So the flavours couldn't unfold properly. Aside from that, it was tasty. The angel cream cake with strawberries was also tasty although, again, too much gelatin in the glaze. And the butter cream filling was rather firm. The whipped cream and cake were good though. Overall it was disappointing. I really wanted to like the place just because service was so friendly and the mains so tasty. But between the menu mismatch, delays, and the desserts I probably won't.

Loved this charming cafe in an adorable small town. Great food, and lots of tables. The perfect…read morelocal spot!

This is a second location for the Cardamom Pod, a vegetarian (apparently vegan) brunch place (the…read morefirst is south of here at Broadbeach). The location itself I'm not a huge fan of. It's not close to the beach or on the tram line, so it wasn't the easiest thing to get to. Moreover, because it took a while to reach, I arrived just after their breakfast had ended and their lunch started. Looking at the breakfast menu, this was a tad disappointing. That being said, the crunchy tofu rolls I ended up were ethnically indiscernible but tasty, combining a Vietnamese presentation with a very Indian-ish dipping sauce and some marinated mango. They were amply spicy and sweet, and with avocado accompanying the tofu, reasonably filling. Their menu on the whole is quite lavish (and expensive). And yet, despite being a pricey pure plant-based restaurant at a non-ideal location, it was kind of busy. Gold Coast, man, I'm telling you. Most parts of the world, there aren't too many fancy vegetarian restaurants and the ones that exist sometimes struggle, but I just can't stop running into them here, and they're doing fine. I imagine I'll be back for some of their chickpea flour breakfast dishes sometime.

Decided to give this place a second chance after trying it during the COVID pandemic when they were…read moreonly doing take away, their food was not to their usual standard. Sorely disappointed with the service this time and didn't even get a chance to eat. From the time of ordering to leaving waited over an hour. Full story is we didn't have an appointment but me and my friend wanted to see if they had seats anyway. There were two tables opening up but the hostess told us to wait and gave us some attitude about it. We shrugged it off and waited about 10min for the table that was just empty the entire ten minutes. When we sat down we looked over the menu and then ordered about 5 min later with the same hostess lady. She unkindly told us that the gnocchi was sold out which is fine but she still had an attitude about it. Then after ordering we waited about an hour and saw people who had come order ate and left. We had been chatting and had ordered a big meal so thought maybe our food took longer to prepare but after an hour we were hungry and impatient and asked the hostess about an update and she said "what food" and we reminded her that she took our order and she just said "omg I forgot" she had not put the order in. In the hour she had not checked on our table even tho by this time half the restaurant tables were empty they weren't that busy. Terrible service. The food however does look and smell amazing from the tables next to us.