Project Team

design: Food Strategy + owners
shopfitting: Aussie Shopfitters

Photos: Judit Losh

Art deco-inspired surrounds, nostalgic eats and a seriously impressive wine list – there’s plenty to take a shine to at Fortitude Valley’s destination for wining and dining: Nickel Kitchen & Bar.

Nickel is the third venue for Brisbane business owners and lovers of quality food and drink, TJ and Kim Peabody, who already have Indooroopilly’s popular Nantucket Kitchen & Bar and NKB Express under their belt.  The venue is born of nostalgia for times when a young TJ, son of New Zealand’s Craggy Range wines founder Terry Peabody, would join his father for business meetings in a golden era of quality food, incredible wine offerings and venues that would consistently provide a great time out.

With a moody, sophisticated interior, the bar is reminiscent of times gone by, featuring leather booths, pressed metal, dark timbers and black and white photos of Peabody’s family vineyards in New Zealand – a combination that Peabody describes as somewhere between the Orient Express and New York’s Grand Central Station. The lower dining room entices with warm timbers, soft leather lounges and a spectacular centre-piece chandelier. The chandelier is uniquely engineered to house a cascade of wine glasses hanging from the ceiling which produces an opulent warm glow.

The dining room is wrapped around a richly stocked opulent bar. It features a pressed metal bar top (made of all Nickel) with moulded trims of a by-gone era. The bar has beer fonts, a keg room, cold rooms and store rooms to house an ample stocked wine and whiskey collection to sooth the experts.

Perched stage-like on the upper level is the chef’s dining table which overlooks the main dining room and extensive wall of wines. The chef’s will personally serve and mingle with diners at this exclusive table.  The long dining table has suitably comfortable plush leather chairs for groups to celebrate each other’s company long into the evening. Alongside the chef’s table there is a glass cabinet displaying kitchen antiques that we have sourced from around the world.

The kitchen overlooks the entire restaurant to allow the executive chefs to visually engage with the diners. It has an impressive cook-line of shiny, black, vitreous-enamel Waldorf Bold commercial kitchen equipment for robust high performance and a look that only a chef could describe as sexy! Coupled with the Convotherm combi oven and Friginox blast chiller freezer, every menu is possible for Nickel Kitchen.