Manly Boathouse

Sit outside. The harbour here is flat and sheltered and properly blue, and the marina sits full of masts moving very slightly the whole time you're there. Inside is a beachy clubhouse and it's fine, but it isn't what you came for.

Boats come and go for as long as you're sitting there, and people arrive off them — somebody ties up, walks over, eats, and goes back out. It isn't decorative and it isn't for show, and it's what separates this from every other place with the same view.

The light comes up off the water and under the umbrellas and everything on the table looks better for it, which is not a complaint and is most of why people stay for a second coffee.

Breakfast is the version to try first. The morning is when the harbour is doing its best work and when the place is at its most pleasant, and there's usually somebody hosing down a deck within earshot, which is about as Manly as a morning gets.

The steak tartare, when it's on, is the thing to order. It turns up more often in the cooler months and disappears again without warning. The fish and chips have a reputation around the bay and the pastries get mentioned nearly as often, and between them they account for most of what leaves that kitchen before noon. In the evening the water goes dark and the marina lights come on across it, and it becomes somewhere else entirely — louder, busier, full of birthday tables for the whole bayside.

Gulls work the outside tables with real commitment and anyone who eats here regularly has developed a technique. It gets loud when it's full and it's full more often than not. Manly runs on that harbour in a way that's unusual this close to Brisbane, with a sailing club and a market and a great many people who moved here specifically to keep a boat somewhere they could walk to.