Gold Coast Dining
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Restaurants, Cafes and Coffee Shops on the Gold Coast
As you'd expect with any tourist town, the Gold Coast has a restaurant on every corner - except that unlike a lot of other tourist towns, most Gold Coast restaurants are really quite good. You won't find the cultural diversity here that you will in Sydney or Melbourne and if you're desperate for good Greek, African or South American food, you're going to spend a while hunting, but if you're after modern Australian cuisine or Asian food your tastebuds are going to be indebted to you for some time.
The large Japanese population of the Gold Coast (both permanent and transient) means there are plenty of fantastic, cheap sushi places (mostly in Surfers Paradise) and the competition among Australian restaurants is fierce, so the quality is usually excellent.
The main place to eat and be seen is Tedder Avenue in Main Beach, where about 30 top restaurants and bars sit side by side on either side of the street. (Just don't drink and drive because when you leave you will have been parked in by a Porsche and a Ferrari and you'll need all your gross motor skills intact if you're going to get out without hitting a $20,000 bumper bar). Surfers Paradise has more places to eat, but they are scattered across wider geography and there is no specific dining 'strip'. The Broadbeach CBD has a good range of delightful dining options, but as you head further south the restaurants become fewer and further between.
If you're after a cheap meal by the ocean pretty much all of the surf clubs (found in pretty much every oceanside suburb of the Coast) have a bistro where no matter what you choose you'll find a huge pile of great food sitting on your plate for less than $15. Menu options are generally limited to chicken parmigiana, fish and chips, spaghetti bolognaise or the seafood platter, but you can't beat the value or the view.
If you want to go even cheaper still, find a corner shop (there's one on every second corner by the beach) and you'll pick up a hamburger with the lot (including pineapple — no one knows why) for $5 and fish and chips for about the same. If you're feeling like you want to splash out a little and wear a suit while you shovel lobster down your gullet, find your nearest five star hotel and they'll have something suitably over-priced for you to impress that special friend with.
When in doubt, just ask a local (they'll be the ones with long sleeves on in summer).