Best Restaurants in Townsville: Fine Dining GuideUpdated

Townsville's restaurant scene reflects the city's dual character as both a regional city with a strong local identity and a military city with a transient, well-paid population that demands quality dining. The access to north Queensland reef fish, the Gulf of Carpentaria prawns, and the Queensland tropical produce makes the city's quality restaurants produce-rich, and the Strand foreshore setting provides one of Australia's finest outdoor dining environments when the dry season north-east trade winds create the perfect evening conditions.

Fine dining and landmark restaurants — A Touch of Salt (Flinders Street East) is consistently rated as Townsville's finest restaurant, with contemporary Australian fine dining and the exemplary local seafood and Queensland produce presentation that defines the best of north Queensland fine dining. The city's hotel dining (the Marriott Townsville and Ville Resort-Casino's dining venues) provides strong hotel restaurant alternatives. Bar 108 (The Ville Resort-Casino, Townsville) provides fine dining with panoramic Strand and Cleveland Bay views.

Strand foreshore dining — the Strand foreshore restaurant strip is Townsville's most popular dining precinct, with the bay views, the evening trade wind conditions, and the Strand's beach volleyball and rockpool ambience creating a unique outdoor dining environment. The dry season (April to October) Strand dining experience on a clear evening with the Cleveland Bay and Magnetic Island visible is genuinely one of the finest outdoor dining environments in regional Queensland.

Flinders Street East café precinct — the Flinders Street East end (between the CBD and the Townsville waterfront) has developed Townsville's finest specialty coffee and neighbourhood dining scene, with quality cafés and small restaurants serving the growing inner city professional population.

Magnetic Island dining — the Magnetic Island restaurants and cafés (accessible by ferry, 20 minutes from Townsville) provide a relaxed island dining alternative, with the Arcadia Village market and the Horseshoe Bay resort café scene providing a distinctly island atmosphere very different from the Townsville mainland dining.

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