You can't talk about fish in the Redlands without talking about Costa's. In both 2019 and 2021, this place on Old Cleveland Road was named Queensland's Best Fish and Chips by the Great Australian Fish & Chip Awards, a People's Choice award established in 2017 by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC).
The owners, Maria, Chris and Costa Tapinos, have more than 30 years of experience in delicious things from the deep, and the family atmosphere is as palpable as the quality and value of what's on offer. This is a true café, open for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner, with tables out front and a dining room tucked around the side. Costa's is also a proper seafood market selling the day's fresh fish, prawns, oysters, crabs and Moreton Bay bugs straight from the boats.
A standard fish dinner ranges fro $18.90 (for cod) to $29 (for a half dozen sea scallops) and comes with salad, chips, lemon and tartare. Snapper, barra, Atlantic salmon, whiting, coral trout, NZ sea perch, sweetlip, flake, NZ dory, prawn cutlet sand calamari are also available. They do a range of seafood platters as well, both hot and cold.
Old schoolers can get burgers, potato scallops, a battered sav, dim sims or a Chiko Roll – Costa's is a happy combo of market-standard cooking and retro fish and chipper. Our cod comes well seasoned and just crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, and the half serving of chips is extremely generous. We'll be back.
