Bland Food Blues

The sunshine coast has many unique and wonderful features that you cannot find anywhere else in Australia. Unfortunately a proliferation of outlets providing distinctive and delicious food is not one of them. There are a few special restaurants located here and there but the vast majority of commercial food outlets are serving bland and boring food. The major reason for this is that they are all buying their ingredients from the same companies – who deliver packaged, processed and usually frozen food right to the kitchen door.

Wondered why that calamari/salt and pepper squid tastes exactly the same (flavourless and spiceless) at every cafe/restaurant you go to? Well it is all prepared in the same factory and then frozen, before being distributed to outlets around the country. Despite having Mooloolaba fishing harbour on our doorstep, very few restaurants utilise fresh local seafood on their menus up this way. It’s a shame but nobody seems to care enough to change this situation. I always say every area gets the restaurants they deserve – that is the beauty of the free market after all.

Sauces and dressings are often made from pre-prepared tubs of factory produced stuff. You may as well stay at home and eat the sauces out of the jars that you purchased at the supermarket. The great majority of food on many menus, simply involves taking something out of the freezer and dropping it into the deep fryer. That is why if you have a look in the kitchen at many cafes/restaurants, there is only one or possibly two people in the kitchen – because they are not really doing any cooking, just re-heating. Despite this you are often paying over $20+ for a dish – that is not to say that many restaurants are making a great deal of money, quite the reverse as real estate/rents are way too expensive in Australia and to get anything maintained or built up this way costs a fortune. So the restaurateur is not going to pay more or go out of his way to put something special on the plate unless there is a demand for it or he or she has a real committment to that kind of thing. Did you know that around 90% of all restaurants in Australia are operating on less than 2% profit margins?

I suppose when dining out you just have to hope that the decor is pretty special.

Another solution would be to actually encourage the tiny percentage of illegal immigration we are receiving and get these refugees from Afghanistan to come up here and open some restaurants. It is a great immigration tradition and that is why our Australian cities now have such rich and diverse culinary cultures. The sunshine coast is way too “white bread” and we need some hard working first generation Australians to share their culture and cuisine with us. Enriching our communities and offering real value for money delicious and distinctive food.