#it smells like hot dog water and old cheese powder and a whole lot like home

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8 of the best family restaurants and cafes in Cairns and Port Douglas

The highlight reel from your family trip to the tropical end of Queensland may resemble a Disney box-office hit as you find Nemo on the Great Barrier Reef and swing through ancient rainforests like mini-Tarzans.

But you’ll need a separate foodie wish list (or your own genie in a lamp) to keep the family fuelled in between all the fun – and this list of family-friendly restaurants and cafes in Cairns and Port Douglas will be your best bet. 

Muddy’s Cafe, Cairns

In between all the splashing at Cairns’ free lagoon, grab your famished mermaids and mermen and dry off at Muddy’s Cafe (right next door to the baby water play area and fenced playground).

You won’t need to whip out King Triton’s staff to encourage the kids to finish their meals with choices like crispy chicken slider, cheeseburger slider, and dagwood dog and chips. Keep up the tropical vibes with a strawberry, watermelon, rockmelon and pineapple juice or a mango, berry, sorbet and pineapple juice smoothie.

Open: 7 days from 7am till 8pm. Where: 174 Esplanade, Cairns. Hot tip: While you’re at it, make a splash at these other swimming spots.

Wharf One, Cairns

You’ll get a lot more than the bare necessities for you and your jungle cubs at Wharf One.

Mornings are best started with Wharf One’s dirty monkey: a banana smoothie with a sneaky shot of coffee. The little people’s brekkie menu offers up boiled eggs and soldiers, poached eggs and baked beans on toast, organic banana and Nutella toastie or French toast with banana and natural honey.

Before heading back to the jungle, try a fancy babyccino with chocolate powder, sprinkles, marshmallow and a cookie.

Open: 7 days from 7am till 5pm. Where: Wharf Street, Cairns. Hot tip: Once you’ve had your fill, head to the Fig Tree playground less than a one-minute walk away.

Prawn Star, Cairns

Unlike the Lost Boys, there’s no need to imagine your food when you board the Prawn Star! Take in the salty air as you chow down on the freshest prawns, mud crabs, cooked bugs, oysters and sashimi in the comfort of a floating restaurant at the Cairns Marina.

If your Lost Boys (and girls) are still developing their sea legs, avoid the plank and make your order a takeaway. You’ll find loads of tables and grassed areas nearby to set up a picnic (and possibly a food fight).

Open: 7 days from 11am till 9pm. Where: Marlin Marina, E Finger, Berth 31, Pier Point Road, Cairns. Hot tip: Mums and dads can order a bargain $5 beer or wine to wash the seafood down.

Ellis Bar and Grill, Ellis Beach

The menu items at Ellis Beach Bar and Grill don’t need an ‘EAT ME’ stamp on them. Big Alices can start the day with the brekkie bowl with cauliflower rice, BBQ mushroom, kale, kimchi, poached egg, chilli jam and guacamole; while little Alices can order mini pancakes or ham and cheese toastie.

Lunch and dinner highlights include a crab and calamari burger or smoked BBQ beef brisket. Kids will be left with a cheeky Cheshire cat-sized grin after gulping down calamari rings, battered fish, chicken nuggets or cheeseburger with salad and chips on the side.

Even if you’re late for a very important date, make sure you leave enough time to wander through the palm trees along Ellis Beach. Alice would recommend it.

Open: 7 days from 8am till 8pm. Where: Lot 13 Captain Cook Highway, Ellis Beach. Hot tip: They flip free pancakes for kids each Saturday from 8am till 11:30am.

Paradise Palms, Kewarra Beach

Even the grumpy old Mr Fredrickson from Up would be happy (okay, maybe not happy, but he might avoid his usual frown) if his balloon travelling house made it to Paradise Palms rather than Paradise Falls.

Either go for crispy pizzas all ’round – they come in kids’ size too – or order classics like burgers, seafood basket, chicken parmigiana or pepper steak; then pavlova with passionfruit if you want your dessert to be inspired by your surroundings.

Eager Wilderness Explorers can wander around the play village complete with super-slippery slide and climbing frame, play on the mini soccer field, or discuss recent badge wins in the Queenslander-style cubby. There’s even a fenced mini-adventure playground for under fives right near the restaurant terrace.

Open: Monday to Thursday 7am till 5pm, Friday to Sunday 7am till 9pm. Where: Paradise Palms Drive, Kewarra Beach. Hot tip: They also offer gluten-free bases for their pizzas if you need to cater to sensitive tums.

The Beach Shack, Kewarra Beach

The heart of Te Fiti might be in Kewarra Beach, so there shouldn’t be any need to leave this island (we mean, beach) for a long time, especially when the crew at The Beach Shack stock their menus with delights for the whole family.

Wednesday’s menu is rammed with tapas and slurpy oysters, so get ready to say, “I’m going to love you in my belly!”

And just like Maui, the shapeshifting demigod, your little voyagers can get up to mischief in the sand while you sip cocktails and take in the beach vibes.

Open: Wednesday 5pm till 8:30pm, Friday 5pm till 9:30pm and Sunday 3pm till 8:30pm. Where: 80 Kewarra Street, Kewarra Beach Resort and Spa, Kewarra Beach. Hot tip: The Beach Shack is open from May to December. Like the rest of us, they don’t like their food soggy, so the Beach Shack is closed during the wet season from January until April.

2Fish, Port Douglas

Forget a spoonful of sugar and grab a bucket of tasty prawns at 2Fish, the practically perfect seafood restaurant. Their menu is spot on with underwater delights like bug tails, crab dumplings and salmon chowder. Fishy kids’ taste buds will be high fiving over the grilled or battered fish or calamari served with chips and salad.

Before their grub arrives, the kids can test their crafty skills and draw on the paper tablecloth or get amongst the activity bag fun (note: no need to raid your Mary Poppins’ sized bag for dinner distractions this time!).

Open: 7 days, lunch from midday and dinner from 5:30pm. Where: Shop 11, Coconut Grove Complex, 56 Macrossan St, Port Douglas. Hot tip: Mary’s spoonful of sugar serving suggestion may not be enough. Sweet-toothed friends may drool over their dessert menu, too.

Port Douglas Surf Club, Port Douglas

The chefs at the Port Douglas Surf Club may have had a little advice from our French furry friend and extraordinary chef, Remy. They’ve kept some old faithfuls on the menu, but they’ve also mixed it up with coral trout tacos, taro chips and salsa, steamed pork buns and tempura prawn sushi. 

Book a table on the big open deck and take in the Four Mile Beach views. Ahhhhh. The kids won’t need any encouragement to finish their meals as there’s an epic enclosed playground right next door to the restaurant.

Open: 7 days from midday till 8:30pm. Where: Corner of Mowbray and the Esplanade, Port Douglas. Hot tip: Walk off your meals along Four Mile Beach and grab some family holiday snaps along the palm tree-lined strip.

Want more ideas for kid-friendly food and babyccino options? Here’s a few to keep up your sleeve:

Waffle On, 64A Shields Street, Cairns | Pretty sure they’ll smell even better than Shrek’s mate Donkey’s waffles.

Gelocchio, 9/93 The Esplanade, Cairns | Just like Mr Geppetto remembers it.

Jaffle Head, 39 Lake Street, Cairns | The waft of melted cheese and precisely cooked toasty goodness would be enough to wake Sleeping Beauty herself.

Rusty’s Market, 57-89 Grafton Street, Cairns | Better known for their fresh fruit and veg and good value market cafe, Aladdin and Abu wouldn’t need to employ their 5-finger discount ways at Rusty’s.

Brewhaha Espresso Bar, 141 Barnard Drive, Mount Sheridan | The perfect spot for some hard-working dwarfs to caffeinate before a long day of work.

Apex Milk Bar, 24 Hoare Street, Manunda | One bite and you’ll be taken back to Radiator Springs where burgers and shakes are served with Flo-level smile and sass.

Mondo’s on the Waterfront, 34 The Esplanade, Cairns | You’ll be able to let it go with Mondo’s good vibes and marina locale.

Palm Cove Surf Club, 135 Williams Esplanade, Palm Cove | Eat your chips before the seagulls from Nemo start swooping and squawking, “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

Before you cut loose in the tropics, ask the locals for their tips. Adventure Mumma is all over the best things to do with kids in Cairns.

And just in case you need more inspiration, here’s a round-up of the 20 best things to do with kids in Tropical North Queensland.

No holding back now. Where’s your go-to family restaurant or cafe in or around Cairns?

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[musecat-ca]

We have two little furbabies.  Teo is 9 and he is a long haired chihuahua and Chica is 5 and she is a mini-dachshund and smooth coat chihuahua.  They make up our little pack of four with my husband and me.  When we got Chica as a puppy from a kennel in Saskatchewan, she had Giardia (Beaver Fever) and her poop has never been good, it took two full rounds of antibiotics to get it to be just okay.  Our little German-Mexican girl is also extremely high strung, over excitable and in many ways acts like children who have ADHD or even little ones on the autism spectrum.  Many times we have to sit and calm her down after any exciting encounter and afterwards she always has watery tummy.  It has become evident that she has IBS or Irritable Bowl Syndrome.  We were using very expensive dog food from the vet, but then it wasn’t making her better anyway.

I have been considering making their food for several years and over the last 6 years (approximately the time we have had her, our lives have changed considerably.  My husband’s position in an IT firm as a Web Developer was phased out after 5 years without notice and just over a year later, my job in Government at Supervisory level was axed after 14 years without notice.  My husband decided to become an Electrician, and after 5 years of school and only working a few months per year, Calgary again went through its 3 recession in 6 years (shouldn’t we call that a depression? – it was damn depressing,  let me tell you!) and once he had his ticket as a Journeyman, he couldn’t get a job for 6 months.

In the meantime, I couldn’t get a job in my field, not because there weren’t any or because I wasn’t fully qualified, but because my profession now requires a University Degree, even though I had several certifications and 24 years of experience.  So, off I went to university at the age of 45.  Flash forward 4 years and I will be getting my degree in the spring, but our lives are going in a different direction and I won’t be getting a nine to five job.

We are going to become Homesteaders.  Part of wanting to make by puppies food from scratch is the desire to make everything from scratch, go back to a simpler time when the food we ate, the clothes that we wore, the feed we gave to the animals we raised; didn’t come from a factory in a form that doesn’t look like any kind of food I’ve ever seen and is loaded with chemicals.  We watched a documentary on Netflix called “In Defense of Food; An Eater’s Manifesto” by a food critic and writer Michael Pollan (www.michaelpollan.com) it really made both my husband and I see food differently.

One thing that I have learned in university (and it is worth the $70,000+ is cost me to go) is that we are brainwashed.  We, in North America specifically, are brainwashed and we don’t even realize it.  How could we?  The USA is still considered to be the most powerful purchaser in the world and has huge corporations that have their hands in everything. From funding university research, to creation of chemicals in our agriculture production, to creations of pharmaceuticals to keep us healthy, make us healthy and to fight diseases like cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease that are all caused by the way we live consuming all of the other products that they produce.  Now before you ask me where my tinfoil hat is… what do we have to do if we know that we have been brainwashed?

Never stop asking why?  Remember our 3 year old self? Why?  It is the best first thing to do in any situation.  Why do we feed our dogs food that is in hard pellet format? Because that is what we have been told is the best thing for our dogs.  Why?  Good question.  I highly recommend watching “In Defense of Food”, it will give you dozens of reasons to ask why. Now and for the rest of your healthier lives.

On to my recipe.  You were wondering, right?  After seeing Michael’s movie I started researching and boy – it took me easily 40 to 80 hours of reading and researching.  Online, at my local library and having books sent over from other libraries.  There is tons of misinformation and contradictory information about what dogs should eat, what is poisonous to them and what they require.  I cut through all of the fad crap, vegan, vegetarian, microbotic, raw doggie yoggies out there and tried to stick to vets and holistic or naturaopathic vets.  I learned that there are three rules to feeding healthy dogs.

Dogs need protein from animals – protein from other sources is not processed as well and will not give your furbaby the protein that their system’s require

Dogs need calcium from bones – this is true and is actually the reason for some of the scariest stories of animal illness from dog food eating trends, dogs who snapped their legs while running from calcium deficiency, just awful.  Dogs require calcium in large quantities, but not from plants or synthetic sources.  Dogs require calcium from their primary sources of protein.  I now buy my little guys bones from the butcher and cook them up.  I also buy tendons, thoraxes, and other parts of the animal from my natural pet store… they love the thorax! To supplement their calcium, I keep all of my egg shells, boil them, dry them in the oven and grind them in a coffee grinder to powder and add 1 tsp of powder to 1 lb of food.

Dogs need fat from animals – I think that this one is just as important.  As humans, we have been bombarded with how bad fat is for us and we have superimposed that on our dogs.  They do not get plaque build up in their arteries.  They do not process fat the same way that we do.  They need fat from animals.  Easiest way to ensure this is in the meat that you make their food out of.  Don’t get extra lean ground beef or turkey breast.  Good for you, sure, but the dog needs more natural animal fat in his diet than that.  Although I do use olive oil, I put butter, heavy cream and cottage cheese in my guys’ food.  Careful on the cheese as it has high salt content.  Cottage cheese is the lowest salt content for the amount of animal fat and calcium.

Dogs Breakfast

6 Large Whole Eggs (free range and nest laid are best)

6 Tbsp of Whipping Cream

1 Cup of Large Flake or Steel Cut Oats

1 Large Apple (diced)

1 Cup of Carrots (diced)

1/4 Cup of 2% Cottage Cheese

3/4 Cup of Fresh Parsley and Mint Leaves (fine chop)

1 Tsp of Egg Shell Powder (instructions to make above)

1 Tbsp of Butter

In a bowl, whisk together Eggs and Cream until thick and yellow.  Place butter (and a tsp of Olive Oil if desired) in large frying pan and once melted and sizzling, pour the egg mixture.

In a medium sized sauce pan cook oatmeal according to the package instructions.  Ensure you put a bit of salt in the water when bringing it to a boil.  Dogs need salt just like humans and if you’ve grown up on a ranch (like me) you will have seen dogs go out to the cows ‘salt lick’ on a hot day.  Once the water has come to a boil, add the cup of Oatmeal to the water (watch it cuz it likes to boil over).

Once the Oatmeal is happily bubbling, you can add your chopped apple and carrot to the pot.  Carrot, one of our puppies favourite things, however they are very hard to digest raw (who knew) so giving them a little cook while still keeping them in a bit of a chunk gives some texture to the dish.

Keep your eye on your eggs and I flip mine once or twice with a rubber spatula (heat resistant) and then break it into scrambled eggs, just like mommy and daddy eat.  Now it is time to get our herbs on!  Mint and parsley are both great for dogs.  I grow some in pots outside in the summer and then I also take the leaves and freeze them in baggies to use during the winter months (which there are a LOT of in Canada).  Mint and parsley aid digestion and make their breath and poop smell better – really.

Grab your Cottage Cheese, chopped Herbs, and Egg Shell Powder and we are ready to combine all the ingredients on a cookie sheet (I put parchment paper on mine for easy clean up).  I lay out the Oatmeal mixture and spread evenly, then the Egg mixture and spread evenly.  I sprinkle the Herbs, Egg Shell Powder, and the Cottage Cheese and then give it a good mix and spread it out again to cool.

I do this mainly because I have these two looking at me, like this.  When all is said and done and the dogs are fed and happy, I put it in two containers, which I label with the date and main ingredients.  I should note that I put some leftover chicken breast in as well but this is not part of the main recipe.  Feel free to experiment.  When raspberries were in season I put some in and peas.  Just write on the top and don’t introduce too many new things at once.  Just like when feeding a toddler.

I put one in the fridge and the other in the freezer and then when I am super busy or tired from canning or painting or something, I can bring the frozen one out the night before and put it in the fridge.  Hope this is helpful.  Hope I am not too long winded for y’all.  Have a great day and love your puppies!

Look for my follow up blog which will be “Dog’s Dinner”

The Dogs Breakfast… Literally. We have two little furbabies.  Teo is 9 and he is a long haired chihuahua and Chica is 5 and she is a mini-dachshund and smooth coat chihuahua.