Hastings Street is not where Noosa eats. Hastings Street is where Noosa charges visitors to eat while looking at other visitors. The food is mostly fine, occasionally very good, and universally overpriced. If you're here for three days and you only eat on Hastings, you'll leave thinking Noosa is a nice expensive town with an average food scene.
That's not Noosa. Drive five minutes in any direction and the real food scene starts.
Sunshine Beach
A ten-minute drive or a proper headland walk from Hastings. The locals who can afford the view live here and they have their own strip of cafes and restaurants that never make the tourism brochures.
- Embassy XO. The second restaurant from the same family as the Hastings one, widely considered the better of the two. Modern Asian, proper wine list, book a week ahead in peak.
- Sum Yung Guys. The name is a pun and the food doesn't need one. South-East Asian share plates, loud room, early sitting is easier.
- Sails Noosa. The Sunshine Beach surf club. Counter meal, view over the sand, the dirt-cheap option that isn't embarrassing.
- Little Humid. Breakfast and lunch, proper coffee, the locals' morning stop after the beach.
If you're doing one dinner in Noosa away from Hastings, Sum Yung Guys is the one that consistently gets recommended by people who live here.
Peregian Beach
Fifteen minutes south of Hastings, on the coast road, smaller and quieter than Sunshine. The village is four streets and most of it is worth your time.
- Embassy at Peregian. No relation, coincidentally named, a good breakfast on a side street.
- Baked Poetry Cafe. The sourdough, the pastries, the coffee. Get there before 9am or there's a queue.
- The Peregian Beach Hotel. The new fit-out is done and it's one of the best pub feeds on the coast, full stop.
- Pitchfork. The longstanding restaurant of Peregian, modern Australian, prices below Hastings for better plates.
Peregian on a Friday night in the beer garden of the Beach Hotel is what Hastings Street wishes it was, and it costs forty per cent less.
Sunrise Beach
Between Sunshine and Peregian, mostly residential, under the radar for visitors. One stop matters:
- Sunrise Beach Surf Club. The quietest surf club feed on the coast, the view is the same ocean as Sunshine, the bistro food is better than it has any right to be. Locals with kids end up here for an early Saturday dinner because it's easy and the kids run around on the grass.
There are two good cafes on David Low Way as well. Clandestino (a roaster that opened here) does the coffee that the better places in town are using.
Tewantin
The town over the river from Noosaville, inland, where most of the people who work in Noosa actually live. Dinner here costs less, the dining rooms are half-full on a weeknight, and it's six minutes by car from Hastings.
- Apollonian Hotel. A 19th-century timber pub moved log by log and reassembled. Sunday roast is the order, sit in the garden. Genuinely one of the better pub feeds in Queensland.
- Sails Tewantin (no relation to the Sunshine one). Thai, a generation old, BYO, cash-preferred, the kind of place where the family who runs it knows their regulars by name.
- Rickys River Bar. Sits on the Noosa River rather than Hastings Street and watches the same boats, at a lower price. Book a table on the deck.
Noosaville, the river side
Not Hastings. Noosaville runs along the river west of the main town, is flatter, greener, and has a distinct food strip that locals use for lunch.
- Locale. Italian, the pizza is good and the pasta is better.
- Bistro C (the Noosaville branch). Casual modern Australian, proper wine list.
- Noosa Boathouse. On a pontoon on the river, upstairs is a proper restaurant, downstairs is a bar with fish and chips. Do the bar on a weekday evening.
Noosaville at sunset with a glass of wine on the river is the Noosa that doesn't get photographed. That's why locals like it.
:::ask-serge Ask Serge about: a four-night Noosa itinerary that books one dinner in Sunshine Beach, one in Peregian, one in Tewantin, and leaves the fourth open, with the Hastings Street breakfast you'll actually want to do once. :::
The one Hastings Street concession
If you are going to eat on Hastings, do it for breakfast, not dinner. Sails Beach Bar for a long breakfast watching Main Beach is genuinely good and the price is the same as anywhere else in town at that time of day. Betty's Burgers started here, is still on Hastings, and the original is still better than the franchises.
For dinner, walk off it. The five-minute drive to Sunshine or the fifteen-minute drive to Peregian is always worth it.
The practical stuff
Book ahead in December, January and Easter. The good Peregian and Sunshine rooms fill out two weeks ahead in peak and a day or two ahead in shoulder. Most of the better places have a 6pm and an 8pm sitting.
Parking in Sunshine and Peregian is fine after 5pm. Not a given in Noosa. Tewantin has plenty.
Noosa's food scene is better than its reputation suggests. You just need to drive ten minutes to find it.
