
I have to confess, I had never heard of Banyo until I had started at said job, and I also have to admit that there really isn’t that much out here in the way of shops or nice little cafes. Rolling green hills- yes. Piccolo lattes- no.
That all changed though when celebrity chef Dominique Rizzo decided to take this quiet little ‘burb and place it firmly on the Google map, with her restaurant, Putia Pure Food Kitchen.
Putia is a Sicilian word, meaning a small shop selling food, wine and household goods, with Banyo’s Putia single-handedly modernising the café scene in this historic Brisbane area.
How has Banyo taken to little Sicily? Let’s find out.
After perusing the small but well-crafted breakfast menu, we decided on the Grilled halloumi with Moroccan spiced carrot hummus, poached egg on wholemeal homemade flatbread, served with rocket and grilled lime.
This vegetarian breakfast had the best complimentary flavours happening. The sweet/spiced carrot hummus offset the salty halloumi which the grilled lime also cut through as well. Each mouthful was just delish.
Also on the menu was the Putia big breakfast, with Black Forest bacon, fried eggs, a house red wine and rosemary beef sausage, potato beignet, field mushrooms, roasted tomato, house relish, baked beans and sourdough.
This big breakfast lived up to its name in terms of both size and flavour. The bacon and sausage were super tasty, and were perfect for the-morning-after-the-night-before. I absolutely loved the potato beignet too, which was ridiculously creamy on the inside while being nice and crisp on the outside. It will be very difficult to go back to plain old hash browns again after this.
Putia serves up breakfast and lunch from Wednesday to Sunday, and also does dinner on Friday and Saturday nights.
While there’s heaps of street parking around, Putia is also just an olive pit’s throw away from Banyo train station. Yes, there’s a train station in this mysterious suburb too- who’d have thought!