Local Legends – how Creole Soul Kitchen became an unexpected star of Brisbane’s dining scene
Creole Soul Kitchen has spent the past decade turning a quiet corner of Spring Hill into a destination for bold Southern flavours and fiercely loyal regulars. The modest restaurant helped rewrite Brisbane’s dining rhythms – drawing crowds on Mondays with the promise of gumbo, grits and good ol’ hospitality. At Creole Soul Kitchen, Southern hospitality isn’t a tagline – it’s the secret ingredient behind a decade-long cult following.
The busiest restaurant in Brisbane on a Monday night isn’t on James Street. It’s not in The City, either, nor is it over the river in South Brisbane or West End.
It’s in Spring Hill – on Boundary Street to be precise.
Underneath the Spring Hill Central Apartments, Creole Soul Kitchen does a cracking trade. From Monday to Friday, large groups can be seen congregating around tables filled to tipping point with steaming serves of gumbo, crispy chicken fried chicken, and plates of linguini with prawns, crab, clams and crocodile sausage. Even at 10:30 pm, when the first few waves of diners start to transition to coffee and beignets, new arrivals are still being seated and served.
Few Brisbane eateries boast a following quite like the one Creole Soul Kitchen has managed to cultivate since opening almost a decade ago. In 2016, before social media had truly ushered in a new age of epicurean enthusiasm and accessibility, Cajun-Creole-inspired cuisine was considered an anomaly.
But when Marc Lewis and Leena Monson opened Creole Soul Kitchen, they did so with an understanding that it would take a little bit for Brisbane – culinarily conservative city, historically speaking – to warm up to what they were putting on the table.
“I didn’t know how people would take to gumbo,” says Marc, reflecting on Creole Soul Kitchen’s early days. “There’s no way to really explain it – there’s nothing like it over here. I knew people would try it because they’ve heard about it in the movies.”
For Dallas-born Marc and Tasmanian transplant Leena, Cajun-Creole food was something they’d become intimately familiar with. Before relocating to Brisbane, the couple lived in Vail – a small ski resort town in Colorado. Here, Leena cooked in a restaurant owned by two brothers from Slidell, Louisiana, learning about the roots and intricacies of the cuisine from those who had grown up eating it.
“Their place had nine tables – it was in a strip mall, it didn’t have a sign, it wasn’t a tourist place. It was a local spot,” says Marc.
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Upon their arrival in Brisbane, the duo decided to replicate the downhome approachability of their previous posting, singling out Spring Hill for its geographic convenience and neighbourhood vibe.
“We had a couple of ideas for various restaurants, but we definitely knew the size we wanted,” recalls Marc. “The original plan was to ensure we could run this place – if we needed to – with the two of us. One person out front, one person in the kitchen and one doing dishes.”
Fast forward to 2025 and Creole Soul Kitchen’s on-shift team size sits somewhere around eight staff members. This is partly to handle the peak-hour crush and also to ensure there is always someone available to explain the menu’s more obscure dishes, if asked.
“It’s like seeing gewürztraminer or gruner veltliner on a wine list – if you can’t pronounce it, you tend not to order it unless somebody can lead you into it,” says Marc. “Now that it’s ten years on, there’s not nearly as much explaining – people know what we’re doing here.”
So, what exactly are Marc and Leena doing at Creole Soul Kitchen? For those still uninitiated, Marc breaks down the restaurant’s focus simply.
“We’re Cajun-Creole centric, but we do that whole Southern soul,” explains Marc. “We play along from Texas to Carolina – the Lowcountry, Gulf Coast area.”
This broadness of scope allows Creole Soul Kitchen to cover a lot of ground and put forth a menu that is surprisingly diverse, considering the spatial limitations of its kitchen and the hurdles associated with creating close approximations of hard-to-find Cajun and Creole ingredients (the restaurant makes its own andouille sausage, buttermilk and cornmeal).
Those after quintessential Cajun-Creole dishes should look first to the small plates, which is where you’ll find snacks like flash-fried confit duck wings, crispy eggplant batons, cornmeal-dusted crocodile sausage and clams in white wine.
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Creole Soul Kitchen’s top sellers – like chicken fried chicken, chicken and sausage gumbo, and crawfish etouffee (crawfish tails cooked in a blonde roux sauce and served over white rice) – sit among the bigger plates, while Po’ Boys have their own section on the menu.
There’s also a number of pizzas and pasta dishes, which pay tribute to the influences of Italian cuisine on Cajun-Creole fare that manifested at the turn of the century, more than 120 years ago. According to a number of American expats, Creole Soul Kitchen’s rustic offering is the closest thing you can get to the genuine article in Brisbane.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here,” says Marc, humbly. “Our food is not made for Instagram – we’re trying to make food that tastes good.”
But the ace up Marc and Leena’s sleeve – and one of the biggest reasons behind Creole Soul Kitchen’s high rate of return custom – is its vast Rolodex of special items (such as jambalaya, red beans and rice, court bouillon, and shrimp and grits, to name a few) which are cycled through weekly.
“Certain people that come in get the same thing every time – they get their pasta or their chicken fried chicken or their gumbo,” says Marc. “The others come in and they don’t even look at that menu. They look at the specials board every time.
“When we put up a certain special [on Instagram] I know I’ll see certain people on a Monday or Tuesday. They’ve been waiting for that chicken and waffle, or they’ve been waiting for the duck French toast. I probably only have about four or five main-course specials that come on more than once a year, because we’ve got so many now.”
While the food is undoubtedly a massive drawcard, many regulars would point to Marc and Leena themselves, and the venue’s warm lived-in aesthetic, as a key part of Creole Soul Kitchen’s appeal and its status as a true neighbourhood local.
“We’re here pretty much every day that we’re open, and that makes a huge difference,” says Marc.
“We know everybody’s names. We know their special orders. I think that’s why people come back. Part of it’s definitely the food, because it’s something you can’t get readily. But I actually think it’s more the fact that people feel comfortable here.”
There’s no recipe or roadmap to achieving cult-favourite status. Sure, there are steps one can take to achieve success in hospitality, but capturing the hearts and stomachs of a core fanbase is more an art than a science. Ask Marc, and he’ll tell you luck had a part to play – especially when navigating hurdles like COVID-19.
“In this industry, you’ve got to be a little bit lucky,” Marc tells us. “I know people who have had the best idea, the best location and really good food and still didn’t make it.
“Don’t get me wrong, we’ve worked our ass off, but we got a little bit lucky and we made it over that hump.”
A little bit of luck might have helped, but it’s the soul – in the food, the people and the place – that’s made Creole Soul Kitchen one of Brisbane’s most beloved dining institutions.
Head to The Directory for Creole Soul Kitchen’s opening hours and contact details.