Good Life Trouble San in Brunswick Heads

Simon Haslam

Elegant, naughty, fresh and fun. These new players on the Brunswick culinary scene are here to cause some trouble. The style is ‘old school fishing village fused with Tokyo street chic’ – dim lights, blonde thatch, luxurious leather banquettes.

This place knows what it’s doing, you can see the river from pretty much every table. We wandered straight in off the street (for busy nights you might want to book) and ordered the first cocktail on the list, the Yuzu Margy – it was a great cocktail and it came quickly. You can tell these guys know how to have fun.

Perched directly over the turquoise of the Brunswick River, Trouble San delivers Japanese cuisine. The three dishes we ordered straight from the top were all winners: eggplant tempura, roast chillies and stracciatella (well, Japanese chefs are allowed to visit Europe) along with the most enjoyable edamame I’ve had.

This is a place to come and relax into an indulgent cocktail, fresh oysters, Wagyu Tataki, and of course Sashimi, at their front-row river bar. Pair that with the silky sounds of their daily DJs and you’ve got yourself a real recipe for mischief. We ended up drinking twice as much wine and ordering twice as much food as we expected, just because it was so good, and so easy. How cool is it to just order more food and drinks, without having to stop the flow of the night, and then just have it turn up?

Trouble San is owned and operated by locals – Lachie, Shamani and Marky. Having grown up just around the corner, a restaurant in Brunswick Heads has been a long-held goal for the trio.

‘We’ve spent our careers helping other people pull off their own dreams, and realised it’s time for us to put our own stamp on the town that we love.’

In creating Trouble San, ‘we’ve drawn on what we’ve seen done well, the things we’ve learnt along the way, but also what we think has been missed. In this case, it’s beautiful Japanese cuisine, approached with modernity and a little bit of mischief.’

Why Japanese? ‘It’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s versatile, and it goes bloody well with a drink. The food is honest. It’s all about allowing quality ingredients to speak for themselves.’

‘One of our primary visions was to carve out a position in what we think of as the perfect Brunswick arvo – swim in the river, jump off the bridge, do a bit of window shopping and then kick back with an amazing feast, fun music, and a few too many cocktails… We’d like to think we’ve brought Bruns a little bit of luxury, without taking ourselves too seriously, because where’s the fun in that?’

Peace, love and crepes

Victoria Cosford her calm professionalism, her attention to order and detail. Her crepes are made from buckwheat flour, from kernels she initially activates, in order to break down the indigestible enzymes, then blends with fresh filtered water. It’s that lovely, slightly nutty batter that she then pours on to the two heavyduty cast iron crepe plates she brought back (on the plane!) from France, before proceeding to fill with either savoury or sweet fillings. Being made from buckwheat means these crepes are gluten-free and can be eaten by everyone, coeliacs included. ‘It was a gamble’, she says, ‘but it worked.’

Cecile Cherrue, crepe maker extraordinaire, cannot conceive of any other lifestyle that would give her the satisfaction she has now. There she is, expertly flipping her paper-thin crepes with a spatula, folding them over, serene and smiling, in an impeccably organised market space, doing what she’s been so enjoyably doing for the past ten years.

And yet it all came about by chance. Living in Sydney, she’d been told by Far North Coast friends that she ‘totally belonged here’, so in 2012 she made the move. Volunteering at the local community gardens, she started making crepes for a festival, using only organic and local ingredients, and loved it so much she decided to carry on. ‘I started with nothing’, she tells me, ‘a camping stove and two crepe pans. Slowly I made money, bought the crepe machines, the gazebo’ – and the rest is history.

A tiny girl in a tutu and gumboots is requesting a crepe with ‘just caramel, no banana’ and, inspired, I ask for one of the same. It’s Cecile’s own salted caramel and it’s heavenly, the whole thing, rich and buttery, yet somehow light!

Why the name? ‘Trouble San,’ they told me with a wink, ‘that’s Mr Trouble to you…’

Born in the south of France, Cecile went to catering school, learning all aspects of hospitality in the process. It’s evident in

Peace, Love and Crepes is at New Brighton Farmers Market every Tuesday from 8–11am, and Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7–11am.