The best fish and chips in Brisbane

The Fish Factory supplies to top Brisbane restaurants including Rick Shores, Otto and the Howard Smith Wharves group. It's said to be the oldest continually running seafood market in town, dating back to the '70s. The kitchen up the back does a roaring trade in some of the freshest fish and chips you'll find. You can find a superb piece of grilled snapper for $15, while mullet, cod or flake is only $9, and chips start at $5.50. Our piece of salmon was cooked medium rare, pink and meltingly soft; the skin on top was crisped to perfection and the seasoning was spot on. Beer battered chips are crunchy and substantial. All are served in biodegradable packaging.  

Few restaurants in Brisbane can boast iconic status but Manly Boathouse gets there on two counts. One, it’s a stunning white dining room with views of the boats moored in the marina as well as Moreton Bay. Lunch (or dinner) here can’t help but be an occasion. Two, you don’t have to be Daddy Warbucks to have an ace seafood experience here, but can line up for fish and chips in the casual outdoor Patio section and eat your catch at the tables under big umbrellas. When Time Out visits the outdoor part, a basic crumbed or battered cod is $11 and, let’s speak plainly, huge. Grilled snapper is a reasonable $16. Half a dozen fat calamari rings ($8) are panko crumbed and tender, nothing like the chewy, overcooked tyres you might be imagining. Prawn cutlets are $3 a pop, as are fried-and battered sea scallops. (Relax, old schoolers – the potato variety are also available.) Got the bug? A cold quartered Moreton Bay bug is just $20, and you can feast on fresh oysters and prawns too if that’s your desire. Our fry-up comes wrapped in paper, with a cardboard annex for the snapper, so you can take the lot away and eat it on the esplanade if you prefer. 

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. 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. A standard fish dinner ranges from $18.90 (for cod) to $29 (for a half dozen sea scallops) and comes with salad, chips, lemon and tartare. Our cod arrives well seasoned and just crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, and the half serving of chips is extremely generous. 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.

It's the self-proclaimed “best little fishmongers in Brisbane” and for good reason. The market has won a bunch of awards for its quality produce, but if it's fish and chips of the highest quality you seek, this is also the place you'll find it. The chips are crunchy, golden and well salted, while the fish is crisp on the outside and firm yet succulent on the inside. Best of all, you won't encounter that “I’ve just consumed a litre of oil” feeling after your last mouthful. The Seafood Markets offer both eat-in and takeaway dining, and there’s a shady outside courtyard to sit in when the weather is fine and eating alfresco is non-negotiable. Pro tip: try to order from the shop front and not the pickup counter, which is confusingly at the front of the store.

This Greek-inflected, open-air, totally awesome fish and chippery has daily fresh fish available by the kilo as well. Grab a table and get your catch in a Rod-and-Reel Combo, which includes chips, salad and tartare sauce. Have it grilled, battered or crumbed, and expect a nice plump piece, moist and satisfying. They are licenced, so you can have a beer, wine or cider with that (make ours a Mythos Hellenic lager) and sit under an umbrella and watch the traffic go by. A fridge full of Delizia gelato and sorbet means dessert is sorted too.  Otherwise known as the Australian seabass, barramundi is rightfully king of the menu here, in all its muddy deliciousness. But they always have cod, whiting, sea perch, snapper, salmon, calamari, barbecued octopus and prawns on skewers too.

For many people, traditional fish and chips means the English variety, but you needn't limit your aspirations to dear ol' Blighty. With its proud Greek heritage, this seafood market serves up a fish and chips that could give any British chippery a run for its money. For $15.90 you can pick up fish and chips which come in an extremely generous size – rich, vinegary chips with pearly-white fish that’s extremely crisp and light. There is also a large selection of homemade salads they pile onto your plate – a far fresher alternative to stodgy mushy peas – and you'll even get a tub of tangy tartar at no extra charge. We recommend you cross the road to eat by the river, or upon the market's little balcony which sits beneath a sprawl of figs. Up the ante with a bottle of wine for $35, and you've got yourself the perfect Mediterranean meal that'll still satisfy your fish and chip cravings.

For many people, fish and chips conjure a whole lot of nostalgia, offering a way to reconnect to the past. If that sentence rings true for you, then you’ll love this charming mom'n'pop outfit in Red Hill. The menu is a remnant of 1970s Australiana with prices to match: potato scallops for $1, dim sims $2.50, minimum chips for $5, or fish starting at $6.90 for battered cod, while the chips come with a thick dusting of chicken salt, because of course they do. A nice piece of grilled barramundi will set you back $11.90, but that's about as fancy as it gets. Special mention must also go to Red Hill Seafood's burger with the lot for $6.

This family-run restaurant has been frying for several decades. A Seafood Meal here is a grilled, beer-battered or panko-crumbed fillet with a chips, salad, tartare sauce and lemon wedges. The sustainable list goes from cod ($22) up to a NZ Ora king salmon for $36 and spans goldband snapper, blue grenadier and red emperor as well as prawn cutlets, barra and flake. For salad you can select from Greek, rocket, seafood or Asian. Our beer-battered flathead comes in three batons of solid batter that crumbles in the mouth without leaving behind an oily taste. Chips are blocky and golden and the largeish serve of rocket salad has shaved parmesan and pine nuts through it. Tartare sauce is housemade and spiked with plenty of lemon juice. We can see ourselves having a long lunch here with friends and making good use of the well-stocked bar.