What: Verve Restaurant – Bar – Cider House
Website: Click here
Where: Basement 109 Edward St, Brisbane, Q 4000
Rating: 
Why:
Hiding down the stairs in the building on Edward Street next to the Victory Hotel, and directly underneath an old-school small film cinema where they regularly show old silent films, is Verve.
Depending upon which part of its website you go to, it may be called Verve Restaurant – Bar – Cider House, Verve Restaurant and Cider House, Verve Cafe, or Verve Cafe and Cider Bar.
I guess the point is that it is a restaurant, a bar and a cider house (and pretty good at being all of those), although not so much a cafe – we’ll come back to that.
It is unashamedly a brick basement which has been brightened up with red and brown toned colours, which combine well with the colours of the brick walls. The atmosphere, though, is anything but “basementy”. Perhaps partly because it was about 6pm on a Friday night when we visited this delightful place, the atmosphere was celebratory and “after-work-drinksy”.
On their website they say this: “Verve Cafe and Cider Bar is the kind of old skool unselfconsciously-cool-without-even-trying venue that they‘re not making any more, which is why it has endured throughout the years while other neighbourhood venues have come and gone“.
Happily, the website accurately describes the venue.
This is not a place one goes to on a romantic date hoping for some quiet conversation. However, it is a place to go for an enthusiastic welcome from young staff keen to appease, a good recommendation for your next drink from the blokey but gracious owner/host and a very tasty meal before you head off to wherever your night was planned to take you.
The restaurant part is to your right as you come down the stairs and there is a reasonably well stocked bar right in front of you when you arrive. The later it gets the louder it gets, but not uncomfortably so, and if you’ve stayed since it was a bit quieter from 5:30-ish, chances are you are just as loud as the next person.
The food selection is a reasonable array of pasta, risotto, pizza and a few other main selections – but there’s an obvious Italian bent to the available choices. The portion sizes are generous and really very tasty. The excellent taste makes the price tag of just under $30 for some pizzas or pasta selections quite reasonable.
Despite the place being 3/4 full when the four of us ordered dinner, the food was fairly quick to come out and the meals were all consistent in their quality.
There is a limited dessert offering and even more limited coffee and tea offering – but they don’t profess to be great tea and coffee makers (in fact, their menu says it is terrible coffee(!) – but it really isn’t as bad as all that). With a multitude of good coffee venues a door or two down on either side, Verve sticks to what it is good at, which is pretty much everything else.
The only disappointment was the bathroom facilities, which are located up a labyrinth of stairs, partly outdoors (unhelpful in the rain) and not that easy to find – you wouldn’t want to have a really urgent need. That said, they were clean and easy to get to once you’d been once.
Despite the bathroom location issue, it still deserves its 4-star rating based upon food quality alone.
The venue has constant music in the background and it is not too loud – the place already has an edgy modern buzz about it that doesn’t need overly loud music to help it, and the owner and staff seem to know that because they don’t seem to overdo anything – the balance is pretty good for most tastes and ages, and the mix of people coming down the stairs really is a mixed bag of ages and walks of life.
For me, it’s not a place where you go and remain all night – but it certainly is a good place to start.
