Ben Williamson doesn’t mind a curve ball. That could be in the big picture or right in the details. He’s executive chef across the six venues of Anyday, the Brisbane hospitality group of which he’s also a partner, which makes him arguably the biggest name in Australia’s third-largest city.

 
 
But his path here was not exactly the usual. Bahrain was a key twist in the plot. Williamson had cooked his way out of his hometown of Perth and onto the eastern seaboard, but when he left Australia, it wasn’t for Europe or Asia or the Americas, but the Middle East. He took a job with Gulf Air and spent a few years based in Bahrain. Landing back in Australia, he worked at top-shelf Brisbane venues Enoteca 1889 and Urbane before heading a kitchen of his own.
 
Gerard’s Bistro, which opened in 2012, was an instant hit, and it was the flavours of the Middle East and North Africa, as interpreted by Williamson, that gave it its sparkle – lamb shoulder with pickled chillies and garlic yoghurt presented on a big round of crisp flatbread, for example, or poached hapuka with caramelised tahini and crunchy sea succulents. Ben Williamson made his name in Australia cooking Middle Eastern food, and then… stopped. Mostly. Sort of.

“After seven years cooking Middle Eastern, I needed a change of pace,” he said. Agnes was the result. While it might sound a bit like it’s part of the trend and tradition of naming restaurants for people’s mums and nannas, in this case it’s the name of the street.
 
It’s a low-key little stretch of Fortitude Valley that’s a mix of 19th century terraces and light industrial, and that history gives the brick warehouse its design cues. Words like “broody” and “dark” come up a lot in the reviews, an effect produced in part by the exposed brick, render and girders, steel detailing and raw concrete, all picked out with quietly careful lighting and a (very) restrained colour palette. One review referred to the “feudal firepit spirit” of the room and its Game of Thrones vibe, “albeit with less slaughter and more great wine”.

One day the beef tartare is laced with the tang of soured cream and anchovy, all laid over beef-fat toast, another day that same beef and sour-cream combo might be offset by hazelnuts, sweet peppers and arabushi – shavings of smoked skipjack tuna. Wagyu from local label Westholme shows up sometimes as a T-bone, simply grilled and served with house mustard and confit garlic, or the flap plated up with sourdough hollandaise, roasted onions.
 
And though it’s not a Middle Eastern restaurant by any stretch, once those skills and flavours are things you’ve got a feeling for, why wouldn’t you put them to use? So, you’ll also find things at Agnes like smoked potato flatbread offered with ricotta, burnt onions and isot, one of the lesser-seen Turkish chilli peppers. It might not be precisely from one Middle Eastern culture or another, meanwhile, but you can see echoes of the region in the duck Williamson roasts, first coating it with a glaze of orange and honey and then serving it on a bed of prunes and smoked onions.

Prod Williamson for a favourite, and he’s reluctant to name just one, but some regulars come up. “We’ve been producing ribs of lamb from the smoker since day one in different iterations – originally a rib served on the bone with a take on a Vietnamese caramel-fish sauce dressing with mountain pepper and spicy herbs through to ribs off the bone with a hot vinaigrette made of the bones, sherry vinegar, olive brine, green peppercorns, dried orange skins and star anise. Whenever we take it off it’s put back on by demand.”
 
Even when it’s not explicitly mentioned on the menu, the Middle East remains a key inspiration, not least when it comes to cooking meat. “Nobody cooks lamb like Arab cooks, for me,” Williamson says. “The whole goats and lambs rendered to pull apart, juicy and pure, propped up on massive trays of saffron and almond basmati for the Iftar banquets at the end of Ramadan for Eid al-Fitr from my time in Bahrain is one of my fondest memories and I’ve tried nothing like it since. But there’s also the simplicity of a lamb cutlet, brined in onion juice and simply coal-grilled with garlic, sumac and lemon – that’s something I miss dearly.”

Then there’s the lamb sweetbreads. Shish taouk was the original inspiration here, but rather than chicken, we’re looking at lamb, and in place of fillet we’re talking the tastiest of the glands. “I like lamb sweetbreads even better than veal,” Williamson says.
 
He marinates them in onion brine spiked with fenugreek leaves and turmeric. They’re skewered, then cooked over the coals, slathered with toum and lemon juice. To serve, Williamson lays them over a tonnato sauce, then piles on salty-sharp pickled cucumbers, peppers and curry leaves. Not something you’ll see in downtown Bahrain or Beirut, but no less delicious for it. “It’s a cultural mash-up that works brilliantly for us.”