Brisbane Date NIghts: Summit Restaurant, Mt Coot-Tha

The beautiful Mt Coot-tha view is the perfect backdrop for a date night.

When it comes to date nights - I'm a little too ambitious. More and more I'm beginning to realise how big the culinary scene in Brisbane is for a smaller city and I'm struggling to keep up. It's come to the point where I've noticed one couple only has so much time - so I've become roping in my lady friends for date nights to tear through my Brisbane date night bucket list faster (even if they’re more platonic occasions than romantic).

One particular date I've had in mind for a while was to visit the iconic Mount Coot-tha Lookout. On Sundays especially the peak is packed full of families, tourists and couples (both the sophisicated kind and the P-platers whose steamy sessions have been forced out of the family home).

The Summit Restaurant atop the Lookout offers a very generous 3-course sunset menu for just $40 pp. It starts at 5PM which gives you optimal time to watch the sky change from a gorgeous pinky-orangey hue to pitch black. Every time I looked up from my meal to the skyline more and more lights became visible on the cityscape.

The restaurant's atmosphere and service was fantastic – they were very accommodating of vegetarians and my glass of water always seemed to magically refill itself.

I just wish my cocktail glass refilled itself magically, too.

Cocktails are priced at around $18 each and there's a nice selection on offer. We settled on the Toblerone cocktail and Raspberry mojito.

$40pp for a fine dining 3-course menu? A classy date night on the cheap.

The entree plate featured a chickpea and lentil kofta topped with a piece of fried tofu, San Choy Bow (they kindly substituted mine with a second kofta because I'm vegetarian), soup and sourdough with balsamic and EVOO. The standout was the sourdough which was everything bread should be - warm, fluffy and deliciously yeasty.

For our mains, my companion opted for the Pork Belly and I dove into the Pan-fried Pumpkin Gnocchi  Both mains were everything we dreamt of, however my only criticism was that the Gnocchi was seasoned a little too heavily for my taste.

The desserts were incredibly generous servings and left us feeling full at that perfect level that sits comfortably before that treacherous "what have I done" guilty point of the night.

The venue certainly seems to have improved after a string of negative online reviews and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to couples for a romantic night out.