Where the fat men roam

After reading about it on BNE: Hot or Not and the activity on UrbanSpoon, Fatman 2 convinced his sidekick in food to head down to Vapiano in Albert St (it didn’t take a lot of convincing).

This place has a very different model, and you can read all about it on the other sites, but it is one that doesn’t translate well to 1pm on a Friday afternoon. The two Fatmen and an acquaintance of questionable sexuality (he ordered a salad) waddled into a very busy establishment and were greeted by what would have to be one of the better hosts to be found in a Brisbane restaurant/cafe. The ordering and payment system was explained to us and we found ourselves a spare table in the very busy and noisy downstairs area as I was afraid of what would be upstairs and decided what to eat.

This is where it got interesting. We each went our separate ways to order pizza, pasta and – ahem – salad.

I made it back to our table first after ordering a Margherita pizza with extra chilli. Salad boy was next back with his bowl of metrosexualness and Fatman 2 was nowhere to be found. After about 10 minutes my generously sized and quality pizza arrived. Five minutes later the salad was finished and about another five after that so was the pizza. A couple of minutes later Fatman 2 turned up with his pasta carbonara (he was entertained in the line up with samples of pizza and bruschetta which was a nice touch, and very tasty).

I don’t know about the salad (I don’t do salads, sandwiches, things with feathers, or Korean [lets hope I never get served a Korean chicken and salad sandwich, you would certainly hear about it]) but the pizza is probably Brisbane’s best value pizza. Miltonios and Il Forno amongst others do a good pizza but this one was both good and good value. I tried some of the pasta carbonara and, for a $15 meal, words do not do it justice.

My concerns are with potentially a few too many gimmicks for my liking (don’t ever put a gimmick between me and my food) and secondly the timing issue (you also have to hang onto that card they give you, loose that thing at your peril). To be fair, we were there at possibly the busiest time of the week and whilst the wait and timing of food was awkward we were in and out in a bit over 30 minutes. The meals ranged in price from $13 to just under $20 so it will never make it into the day-before-pay-day challenge. I am looking forward to a return visit next week for the pasta.