Restaurants, hotels, bars and wineries in Cairns from the En Primeur Club guide.
Accolades in Cairns
Cairns City holds most of the venues in our guide with the more developed wine focus. These are the rooms where wine sits alongside seafood, Italian cooking or a café format.
Pist4cchi in Cairns City is an Italian restaurant built around handmade pasta, with an extensive wine list, a wine list and craft cocktails. It has an open kitchen, and the pasta comes from Nonna’s recipes.
Bellocale Italian Seafood Restaurant in Cairns City serves modern Italian cuisine with fresh local Cairns seafood and has an extensive wine list. Service is à la carte. Dishes include Seafood Ravioli and Pappardelle Bugs.
Arte by Crystalbrook in Cairns City is a neighbourhood café and wine bar with light seasonal plates, an extensive wine list and a wine list. It sits within Crystalbrook Bailey and has counter dining and small plates.
The marina and Esplanade precincts are where Cairns leans into seafood, rum and relaxed waterfront dining. These are the rooms closest to the city’s coastal dining identity.
Salt House in Cairns Marina is a waterfront restaurant with a wine list and craft cocktails. It holds a Relais Chateaux Award (2026) and serves modern Australian seafood à la carte, with relaxed tropical dining.
Calypso Club in Esplanade / Cairns City is a seafood and rum bar with a wine list, craft cocktails and a beer programme. The set-menu and à la carte formats sit inside a waterfront dining belt shaped by reef traffic and tropical weather.
Three Wolves in Cairns City is a laneway bar with a wine list and over 300 whiskies. It serves classic and craft cocktails, including a cedar smoked bourbon Old Fashioned.
Cairns City has the strongest dining concentration in our guide, with 6 venues, the highest neighbourhood total in our guide. The neighbourhood includes Pist4cchi, Bellocale Italian Seafood Restaurant, Pho viet, Arte by Crystalbrook and the laneway bar Three Wolves.
There are no Michelin-starred restaurants in our Cairns guide. The Michelin stars total in our guide for Cairns is 0. In our guide the starred-restaurant count is 0 and the stars total is 0.
The waterfront focus is around Cairns Marina and the Esplanade. Salt House in Cairns Marina and Calypso Club in Esplanade / Cairns City are the clearest examples of that coastal dining pattern.
The strongest wine programmes are mostly in Cairns City: Pist4cchi, Bellocale Italian Seafood Restaurant and Arte by Crystalbrook each has an extensive wine list, and Salt House in Cairns Marina has a wine list.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Cairns
Selected entries from the current guide for Cairns.
Cairns, Australia
Salt Water Restaurant sits at The Pier Marina on Cairns' waterfront, positioning Australian seafood within reach of the reef and the catch that supplies it. it represents the more considered end of Cairns' dining scene, where the proximity to the Coral Sea is treated as an ingredient rather than a backdrop.
Cairns, Australia
Arte by Crystalbrook fits Cairns’ daytime dining rhythm: compact, central, and shaped by a city where tropical produce and hotel-ground-floor convenience often intersect. The stronger angle here is not ceremony but sourcing context, with Queensland’s fruit, seafood culture, and breakfast-to-lunch trade setting the frame for how to read the experience.
Cairns, Australia
On Shields Street in central Cairns, Bellocale pitches Italian seafood cooking against one of Australia's most productive marine regions. The coral reefs and tropical waters of Far North Queensland supply a catch profile that sits well outside what a Mediterranean-rooted kitchen would typically encounter, making this a study in how Italian technique travels when the ingredient base shifts dramatically.
Cairns, Australia
Calaveras Street Fusion sits on Draper Street in Parramatta Park, one of Cairns' more residential dining pockets, where fusion cooking has quietly carved space alongside the city's dominant seafood and Vietnamese traditions. The address places it away from the Esplanade tourist corridor, signalling a local-leaning clientele and the kind of cooking that doesn't need a harbour view to justify itself.
Cairns, Australia
Calypso Club sits in Cairns’ waterfront dining belt, a part of the city shaped by reef traffic, hotel guests, night-market footfall and tropical heat.
Cairns, Australia
Pho viet sits on Abbott Street in central Cairns, placing Vietnamese pho and its surrounding canon of Southeast Asian-inflected dishes within easy reach of the esplanade precinct. The format fits the broader pattern of casual, high-turnover Vietnamese rooms that have anchored affordable weeknight eating across Australian regional cities for decades.
Cairns, Australia
Pist4cchi focuses on authentic Italian handmade pasta, with an open kitchen, extensive wine list, craft cocktails, and a smart-casual, conversational setting.
Cairns
Selected entries from the current guide for Cairns.
Cairns, Australia
Alamanda Palm Cove by Lancemore sits on one of Far North Queensland's most composed stretches of beachfront, earning Michelin Selected recognition in 2025. The Lancemore Group's approach to boutique accommodation places it in a design-conscious tier distinct from larger Cairns resort properties. Palm Cove's village scale and melaleuca-lined foreshore set the tone before you reach the door.
Cairns, Australia
Crystalbrook Riley occupies a prime position along the Cairns Esplanade, where the Coral Sea horizon and the city's tropical light set the tone before guests reach the lobby. The property sits in a tier of Australian design-led hotels that prioritise position and aesthetic identity over room count, placing it in a different conversation from the large international chain hotels that dominate Queensland's gateway cities.
Cairns
Selected entries from the current guide for Cairns.
Cairns, Australia
Three Wolves on Spence Street occupies a position that Cairns has historically struggled to fill: a serious bar with a cocktail programme that earns attention on its own terms, not simply as an adjunct to the city's tourism circuit. In a regional centre better known for reef departures than craft drinking culture, that positioning matters. Find it at 13A Spence St in the CBD core.
Cairns
Selected entries from the current guide for Cairns.
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