It’s hidden down a one-way street, but once you find it, you’re in business. It’s the Toowoomba foodie destination that’s caught the attention of the likes of The Great South East TV show, and famous chefs Hayden Quinn and Belinda Jeffery.
Created almost five years ago by Sharyn Donaldson, The Sauce Kitchen is about food in every way; it’s a kitchenware retail space, cooking school, café and catering service.
“I originally thought I’d have a domestic dishwasher and a few benches,” she says. “But we have a fully working commercial kitchen, the café has really taken off and catering is very big for us now. We can do as small as dinner parties for 12, up to a three course meal for a sit down, black tie wedding for 200 people in the middle of nowhere in tents.”
Sharyn has a regular team of qualified chefs to teach classes, and is always welcoming special guests to the roster. Upcoming visits include chef, cookbook writer and TV presenter Belinda Jeffery and Mel Townsend from Vanilla Zulu in Brisbane. The aim is to offer variety.
“We like to go across the board,” she says. “We brought in a whole forequarter of lamb and went through butchery, we’ve done cheesemaking, breadmaking with Yoke Mardewi, and we do speciality areas such as Tunisian, Moroccan or North African. We like to listen to what people want.”
They also like to keep things local as much as possible, showcasing favourites like Yagerburne Beef, GreenAg Turkey, and Hampton Blue berries.
The rise in great local produce and the recent evolution of Toowoomba’s food scene is something the Sauce team are excited about.
“We didn’t eat out 10 years ago in Toowoomba because I could cook better food at home,” Sharyn says. “That’s not the case now – we’ve got a lot of variety. Toowoomba’s changed from a cooking and ingredient point of view – I would get recipes and think ‘I want to cook that’ and you couldn’t get the ingredients but it’s easy now.”
Sharyn Donaldson checking out what’s cooking the Sauce Kitchen.
So, what’s on the Sauce menu? Sharyn says it changes according to the season.
“A winter favourite is Thai coconut pumpkin soup, another popular one is bacon and spinach. Homemade quiche is always popular. We usually do a lamb – the lamb at the moment is a slow cooked shank curry and we’ve got beef that’s simmered with Chinese dates and shiitake mushrooms.”
If that’s not enough to get your mouth watering there’s always sweets to be found. Brownies, lemon curd slice, cheesecake slice and a paleo raspberry slice are among the few delights.
With a healthy looking garden bursting with herbs and fruits the emphasis is on fresh food in its natural state and helping to educate people, big and small, on how to brighten up their meals.
“We don’t buy any frozen products, we don’t pre-package anything,” Sharyn says. “Children that come here go out to the garden and they see what’s growing in the garden and they add it to their food and eat it.
“Some of them think beetroot comes in a can and they really don’t get that there’s a whole bit that comes before that. I still use tinned food but there’s certain things that if you’ve got time it’s so much nicer if you don’t have to used tinned food.”
If you want to get in on the Sauce Kitchen action a few classes coming up include creating naked cakes with Poppies for Willow, presenting fabulous food with Mel Townsend and knife skills with Tony Ching, a class that Sharyn says is consistently the most popular on the roster.
Sauce Kitchen is located in Station Street and open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and Saturday 9am to 4pm. You can follow the tasty goodness on Facebook and Instagram.
Photos courtesy of The Sauce Kitchen
