From Cooloongatta to Cairns, Queensland is seeing a dining boom. The state is longer than most people remember. We drove the whole thing from the Gold Coast tot he Far North and ate accordingly. Like the tourism slogan of years past. Where else but Queensland.

The menu leans classic European with quiet Asian inflections running throughout. They're subtle enough so you might not notice until the third or fourth course, at which point you realise they have been there all along. Premium seafood sits alongside heritage breed proteins, Belgian chocolate desserts nod to Van Camp's origins without tipping into novelty.

Pale pink, with a barely there blush that Provence has made into something of a competitive sport. In the glass it smells like someone opened a window facing the sea.

At $48 it is, genuinely, one of the most difficult wines in Australia to argue against. One esteemed wine mind called it the best sub-$50 bottle in the country. They were not being silly.

The food is where Dempsey's training asserts itself. The menu is compact and changes with the seasons and with what's available locally.

The word prodigy gets used about young chefs so often it's lost most of its force, but Allen is a reasonable candidate for the real version of it.

The Meringandan does not have a chef's bar or a natural wine list or a seasonal tasting menu with a chef's note explaining the provenance of the soil. It has chicken parmigiana. It has bangers and mash.

...and something vaguely Alsatian going on. Provence via Perth, basically.