Saint Lucy caffè e cucina

Great coffee and perfect spot for brekkie or lunch! Food is great, love the pizzas!

Saint Lucy is such a lovely spot, overlooking the tennis courts of UQ and withal relaxing vibe.
We shared a margarita pizza washed down with wine and beer and had a thoroughly relaxing lunch.
Plan to come back here on our next visit to Brisbane.

Really nice semi-​outdoor Italian place overlooking the UQ tennis courts.
The menu is not lengthy, but is varied, with large and small dishes and pizzas. (I’ve only had a pizza, but it was good.) The wine list is respectable, including a few from Italy, and from where I’m sitting they appear to have quite a good beer fridge too (as befits any restaurant situated in a university).
A good place for a sunset dinner, while other people do the work on the courts.

Consistently disappointing and over-​priced. Because Saint Lucy has a nice ambiance and an unbeatable location on the UQ campus, my department always takes guests here for lunch or early dinner. And we (or at least I) always come away wishing we had gone somewhere else.
The drinks are fantastically overpriced. Service is slow and inconvenient – no split bills. Food ranges from not bad (some of the salads, or the gnocchi) to downright awful (the pizza). The coffee is pretty good, and the view is great, but this doesn’t go far to make up for the shortcomings.

St Lucy’s (which, I believe, is run by the owners of the Hundred Acre Bar at Hillstone up the road) is unquestionably better than the ³⁰⁄₄₀ café that occupied the space previously.
The food is of reasonable quality, but is expensive. I’ve had a number of disappointing meals there (it’s not okay to charge $ 22 for fish and chips and the chips to be cold), but the wait staff have always made things right on prompting. It’s open on weekends (particularly useful if you’re bringing kids onto campus to use sporting facilities), has probably the best café breakfast on campus, and it’s got a really nice location.
A good option for after-​work/​after-​uni drinks if you don’t feel like braving the Red Room or Pizza Caffe.

I wish there were an option for 3.5 star Unilocal reviews…
I was particularly disappointed with their risotto. It wasn’t cooked long enough, and it sort of resembled grey porridge with sharp bits.
Their drinks are good and it’s undoubtedly a step forward from ³⁰⁄₄₀. Take away service can be slow when they are busy.

Saint Lucy caffè e cucina represents the maturation not only of the University and St Lucia, but somewhat of Brisbane itself. With the closure of the a number of venues on campus due to refurbishment or financial problems, the easy way out would have been to plug the holes with yet another chain, Subway or Coffee Club. Instead, what has opened up in the place of the old ³⁰⁄₄₀ is a largely unique café that straddles the boundary between authentic Italian and experimental contemporary Australian (whatever that means).
It is clear that the proprietors of Saint Lucy have high hopes for the establishment. The atmosphere is modern, yet tropical, and very well suited to the location. It is very easy to forget that the café is flanked by a road and a series of tennis courts, particularly at night. The wait staff are courteous, competent, and most importantly attentive.
But all of that aside, the most important aspects hit the right notes as well. The food is authentic and adventurous without being overpriced. The breakfast menu offers an Italian classic, bomboloni, which are Italian pastries that resemble a Berliner or doughnut. They are not to be passed by, and possibly the only to be had in Brisbane. The rest of the breakfast menu could do with a reworking, offering the usual café fare of eggs, poached or otherwise, and a big breakfast. The continental breakfast of a black coffee with fruit and pastry is nowhere to be seen. The tame breakfast menu is a good encouragement to keep it Italian: small breakfast with a strong espresso to give the day a shot in the arm.
The lunch and dinner menus are where Saint Lucy truly shows her Italian colours. The pizza selection is not large, commencing with a beautifully authentic margarita, only to veer off course with a lamb pizza featuring snow pea shoots and labna, ingredients that could not be more authentic… The rest of the menu is similarly torn between authenticity and experimentation. Whilst this means that Saint Lucy will not pass for authentically Italian, it does make the café much more unique and worthwhile. The cost of the meals is more than justified by what is on offer. One of the specials that I had, jamón croquettes, best illustrates Saint Lucy’s approach. Whilst croquettes and jamón are in no way Italian, they were both masterfully done, and presented with a cooked tomato sauce that is clearly the product of someone who understands the Italian approach to cooking with fresh, ripe and flavourful ingredients. The jamón, which on other menus can be overbearing in a dish so that the customer does not feel cheated (or, in the alternative, is completely absent to the palate because the customer is being cheated) was masterfully used in the croquettes. The jamón could be clearly tasted without overpowering, and it is immediately obvious why jamón is used instead of prosciutto. One minor issue with the meals is that the distinction between the piccolo (small) and grande (large) being blurry, with the risotto and croquettes not differing much in size.
The dessert menu, whilst somewhat short, is similarly expertly executed. It offers one of the best tiramisu in Brisbane. The coffee, whilst well done, does have some room to improve. The espresso is pulled well without being extracted for too long or pressed too hard to produce a bitter or watery taste, but it lacks distinction from any other espresso. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the time where it was sufficient for an espresso to not be bitter is over.
The drinks menu offers a nice assortment of red, white and sparkling wines, with a number of local and imported beers and, of course, cider. A cocktail menu is on offer, with not a single Italian cocktail to be seen anywhere. An Americano, Negroni or Bellini would be much better features on the menu than «call me peachy», «the kiwi», and «equal balance». Pimms cocktail and sangria are also offered, at a somewhat lower price, and seem to fit the venue and its décor better. They call to mind long summer afternoons and friendly games of tennis more than a tequila cocktail. Overall, the cocktail menu continues the sad trend wherein cocktails attempt everything in their power to mask the alcohol being used, rather than relying on a quality spirit to be enhanced by the addition of a few small and subtle ingredients.