VIRTUAL REALITY

You can’t book a table, but you can enjoy food from some of our city’s top chefs. Sally Coates takes us inside the Gold Coast’s secret restaurants

HAVE you ever been trawling a food delivery app and come across an eatery you’ve never heard of ?

Perhaps the more curious among us have even done a Google or Facebook search ... but still, nothing.

That’s because they’re virtual restaurants – restaurants that exist only in the online sphere, but still produce deliciously real food.

Uber Eats spokesperson Megan Smith says the trend is on the rise, with virtual kitchen owners falling under a few different categories.

“Basically it’s a restaurant that runs out of an existing restaurant or commercial kitchen,” she says. “So people can’t walk in and order food, its only available through Uber Eats.

“There are some running out of commercial kitchens. These are entrepreneurs who want to experiment in the industry and, instead of paying weekly rent, they just pay an hourly rate for a commercial kitchen.

“There are some places who have three or four virtual restaurants operating out of the one physical restaurant.

“They have to have a commercial kitchen food license and have a registered business name — it’s treated as any other Uber Eats restaurant.”

High-profile restaurateur Dennis Duncanson is among the local chefs bypassing bricks and mortar to play in the virtual sphere.

The chef, a graduate of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen training program and owner of Fingers and Bones catering, recently launched Saucy Buns Burgers, available only through Uber Eats.

He and Blackboard Coffee owner Marc Kinvig struck up the deal to make better use of Marc’s Varsity Lakes kitchen, which is usually empty at night. “With Uber Eats you don’t have the hassle of overheads, labour, utilities and all that goes with it,” Dennis says.

“You’re just in the kitchen, phone goes ping, you knock out an order, great, done.

“You’ve got to show that it’s a councilapproved kitchen. They want to see the public liability and all that. It’s brilliant to be able to share cost and commitments and, in this day and age, rent is crazy and going up all the time, plus electric, gas, water — nothing ever gets cheaper. It’s a no brainer. And also for Marc, he’s getting the most of his rent and his kitchen without having a dead space at night.”

If you’re keen on seeing what a virtual kitchen has to offer, Saucy Buns serves six staple burgers, from classic beef to Asian style chicken thigh, plus a range of sides.

With 24-hours notice they can even add specials depending on what their Tweed Valley butcher has to offer.

Then there’s restaurants such as Orchid Vegetarian Cafe in Surfers Paradise, which operates three virtual restaurants out of its physical premises to make the menu easier to search and digest for customers.

“Even though it is a simple menu there are just so many options and when you are trying to go through on the app I don’t think you’re going to find the items, so we decided to split them,” manager Carla Vieira says.

“So we have The Acai Hut, which is all of our different acai bowls, Kombucha Health Bar and Vegan Joint.

“So if a customer wants an acai bowl or vegan food it’s right there. It’s more straightforward.”