Accommodation Near Spirit House Yandina. And Where to Stay Afterwards

There is a particular problem with dinner at Spirit House. It is not the food,

and it is certainly not the setting. It is the drive home.

Spirit House is the kind of restaurant you want to linger over a long lunch

that drifts into afternoon, or a dinner under lantern light where nobody is

watching the clock. Which is a shame if you are heading back to Brisbane

afterwards.

We are twenty minutes up the range.

A restaurant built around a pond

Helen and Peter Brierty opened Spirit House in Yandina in 1995, and it has

spent the three decades since becoming one of Australia's most awarded Asian

restaurants.

The setting is the thing people remember first. The restaurant sits in dense

tropical garden, arranged around a still pond, with the small spirit house

that gives the place its name looking out over the water. It feels much

further from the Bruce Highway than it actually is.

The kitchen is contemporary Asian, Thai-leaning, built on the sharp, layered

flavours the region does well. There is also the Hong Sa Bar if you want

something more relaxed than a full sit-down meal.

You will find it at **20 Ninderry Road, Yandina** just behind the Ginger

Factory. One quirk worth knowing: GPS systems often list the address under

"Bridges" rather than Yandina, so put **20 Ninderry Rd, Bridges** into your

maps app and you will not end up circling.

The cooking school

Spirit House also runs a purpose-built cooking school, and it is genuinely

hands-on rather than a demonstration you watch from a stool.

Classes run daily, with additional Friday and Saturday evening sessions, and

the price includes the meal you have cooked plus wine. The chefs spend the

session demystifying Asian ingredients and technique the sort of class you

leave actually able to repeat something at home.

It works particularly well as a group activity. It also works beautifully as

the centrepiece of a weekend rather than a rushed day trip, which brings us

back to the drive.

Twenty minutes up the range

Taman Sari sits on a ridge-line above the Obi Obi Valley at Mapleton, on the

Blackall Range. Spirit House is a **twenty minute drive** away a distance

Spirit House themselves note when they list us among the places to stay near

the restaurant.

The drive is part of it. You climb out of the Yandina flats and up through the

range, and by the time you reach Mapleton the air has changed. On a winter

night there is often mist sitting in the valley.

We have only two pavilions, Bamboo and Lotus, separated by stands of bamboo

and reached along garden walkways lit by Balinese lanterns after dark. Each is

private, adults-only, and designed for two people who do not want to see

anybody else.

Which is exactly the right thing to come back to after a long dinner.

Making a weekend of it

The obvious version is a cooking class on the Saturday and dinner somewhere

local on the Sunday. But the hinterland rewards a slower plan than that.

Within a short drive of the pavilions you have Montville and Maleny, the

Mapleton Falls National Park, Kondalilla Falls, and the walking tracks along

the Blackall Range. There are wineries, galleries and enough small-town cafés

to fill a morning without trying.

Our minimum stay is two nights, which is not a sales tactic so much as an

observation one night here is not enough to slow down properly, and slowing

down is the entire point.

Pets are welcome too, for a small cleaning fee, which is rarer than it should

be at this end of the market.

Planning it

If you are booking a table or a class at Spirit House, book that first the

cooking school in particular fills well ahead, especially for weekend

sessions. Then work your stay around it.

We are at 226 Obi Obi Road, Mapleton. Two pavilions, a valley to look at, and

twenty minutes between you and one of the best meals on the Sunshine Coast.

Check availability →