Prettiest footy club in Brisbane’s south-west becomes a slick gastropub

The Sherwood Magpies Football Club is an institution, and has existed in one form or another for more than a century.

And its clubhouse, between two white picket-fenced playing grounds in Chelmer and flanked by enormous trees, boasts one of the prettiest settings in Brisbane’s bucolic south-west.

So you wonder: did owners Reagan Nongkhlaw and Urvik Bhalani feel a sense of responsibility when opening Fair Play Kitchen, their new gastropub, inside the clubhouse?

“Yeah, we did,” Bhalani says. “The club has a lot of players, a lot of past members. There’s a lot of emotion attached to it. There’s a couple of big boards inside with the player names on them. People will say, ‘Oh, that’s my grandfather. That’s my father.’

“Volunteers do a lot of work outside saying they pretty much grew up here. It’s got such a history and a name, so we didn’t want to mess it up.”

Not that you’d expect Nongkhlaw and Bhalani to mess it up. They own Method to the Madness in Kenmore, serving refined takes on brunch classics that have become a hit with locals. A gastropub in a suburban football club feels very much in their wheelhouse.

“There’s a fair bit of money in the area, and it’s very community focused,” Bhalani says. “They wanted somewhere to go out for good food and good wine.

“There are no pokies in the club. It’s very family-friendly. The grounds are fenced so the kids can run around while the parents have something to eat.”

Nongkhlaw and Bhalani have spruced up the inside of the clubhouse with a lick of paint, new furniture and plenty of potted greenery about the place. Outside there’s a line of planter boxes that double as a herb garden for the kitchen. And that’s more or less it – in terms of vibe, the lovely location overlooking the footy ground does the heavy lifting.

For food, chef Nongkhlaw has balanced pub classics such as a chicken parmigiana, a cheeseburger with Woombye triple-cream brie, tomato, pickles, lettuce and special sauce, and a 250-gram grain-fed rump steak with house fries, pepper sauce and café de Paris butter, with more upmarket items like a Moreton Bay bug risotto, beef tartare with cornichons, capers and potato crisps, stracciatella with beetroot, green apple, radicchio and walnuts, and market fish with confit potatoes, garlic skordalia, olives, cavolo nero and braised fennel.

There’s also a pizza menu that peddles classics such as a margherita, a quattro formaggi and a pepperoni, and the entire menu is simplified for lunch while adding a trio of salads (a classic Caesar, a calamari, and an apple and walnut).

In the morning, there’s a classy brunch menu that includes a chilli scramble with ricotta and banana peppers, mushroom and ricotta croquettes with smashed avocado, confit tomatoes and a poached egg, and sweet potato okonomiyaki with a fried egg, kewpie mayonnaise, tonkatsu and nori flakes.

For drinks, a range of Coopers and Sapporo is on tap, and there’s a tight, efficiently priced 30-bottle wine list that nevertheless globe-trots from New Zealand pinot noir and Mornington Peninsula chardonnay to Italian and French regional varieties.

“This is just our fourth week,” Bhalani says. “People have really responded to it and are returning during the week, so we couldn’t be happier.”

Open Wed-Thu 6.30am-3pm, 5pm-9pm; Fri-Sat 6.30am-9.30pm; Sun 6.30am-3pm, 4pm-7pm

41 Chelmer Street East, Chelmer, (07) 2143 7859

fairplaykitchen.com.au