Sunday Steaks at Fairhill: Wagyu Long Lunches on the Sunshine Coast

Sunday lunch on the Sunshine Coast has a new ritual. From this month, the Gardens Café at Fairhill Adventure Gardens is serving Sunday Steaks: Australian Wagyu, cooked the French way and eaten slowly, surrounded by the gardens at Ninderry. If you have been searching for the best steak on the Sunshine Coast, or simply a long lunch worth crossing town for, consider this your invitation.

What a marble score actually means

A marble score is the number used to rate the marbling: the fine threads of intramuscular fat running through a cut of Australian Wagyu beef. The higher the score, the more buttery and tender the beef tends to be.

Australia is one of the biggest producers of Wagyu beef in the world, and uses its own grading scale, the AUS-MEAT marbling system. Australian Wagyu grading scores are identical to the Japanese BMS scale, meaning an Australian Wagyu BMS 6 is the same as a Japanese Wagyu BMS 6.

Richer and denser than standard premium steak cuts, a Marble Score of 6 or above gives a noticeably creamier mouthfeel in each bite. Buttery without being overwhelmingly opulent, and perfectly cooked by our French chefs, who have worked in the finest Michelin kitchens in France and Monaco. They are now here, celebrating the purest seasonal, local and homegrown farm-and-garden-to-table ingredients used in our kitchen. Wagyu on the Sunshine Coast, in other words, without the drive to the city.

Pay the farmer now or the doctor later

That line guides everything we plate. We believe in Blue Zone food: no seed oils, margarine or other artificial ingredients are used when cooking in our kitchen. Just proper ingredients, treated with respect, from the garden and from farms we trust.

What's new on the menu

Make a proper long lunch of it

A long lunch on the Sunshine Coast should never feel rushed, and here it does not have to. The Gardens Café opens from 8am, the Sunday Steaks come out from 11.30am, and last food orders are at 2pm, which leaves a generous window to settle in, order well and let the afternoon stretch. Before or after, there are gardens to stroll, a nursery full of natives, and plenty for the kids while the adults linger over a second glass.

You will find us at 114 Fairhill Road, Ninderry, on the Sunshine Coast. Everything you need to plan your visit is a click away, and Sunday tables do fill, so booking ahead is the wise move.