Beautiful food and South Americans in Port Douglas

Bel cibo means beautiful food in English and last night we had some. We went into Port Douglas itself for dinner and decided to try one of the Italian restaurants we had turned down last time. We were too late to score one of the tables on the terrace overlooking Port Douglas' main drag but in the end we decided that this was a good sign. They only had two free tables, so having looked a little bit elsewhere we decided to give it a go.

And it was nice. Well David's pizza - adventurous though it was - Italian sausage and gorgonzola was interesting but in the end he thought the gorgonzola was a bit too much. Well pizza is always hard isn't it? The first couple of slices are always good but after that it goes sort of cold and soggy. Well that's what I think anyway. But it was different anyway. Me - I played a bit safer and went for the linguine with prawns and chilli and tomatoes. Yum. Lots of garlic and a bit of spinach too. Now I know we are not talking fine dining here, but it was pretty nice and the place was very buzzy. And we had room for dessert - chocolate cake for David, strawberry and almond tart for me - very nice.

it is apparently owned by one Andy Gray - a New Zealand chef who began with Matt Moran at Aria, moved on to 2 Fish in Port Douglas - an award winning seafood restaurant here - apparently it was he who raised it to award winning status, and then decided to open his own place - bel cibo. The location is good - in the middle of the main drag and raised above the street, so a winner. I think he has been here 8 years.

And like almost all the restaurants and hotels in Port Douglas it's staffed by a bevy of beautiful, friendly backpackers. And almost all the waitresses and waiters that we have asked so far this time have been from either Argentina or Chile. I believe if you are here on a one year working holiday visa you can get it extended another year if you go somewhere other than the main cities - hence the number of backpackers in Port Douglas. It's a good life if you work the evening shift - beach during the day, work at night and then probably party afterwards. But of course some of them have to do the earlier shifts - like the guy who brought us our bottle of bubbly courtesy of the hotel (it's a bit of a long story), who had hardly been outside in the sun today. Maybe he will get an evening shift sometime soon.

Tonight we are doing the Yacht club where the backpacker waitress who took our reservation seemed to be more Scandinavian. We shall see.