Isaac Mundraby has whipped up his life-long passion for bush foods into a Sunshine Coast hospitality venture, championing their unique flavours for customers through mouth-watering dishes and tantalising cocktails.
While he has lived most his life in Brisbane, Isaac’s family heritage lies in the Yidinji tribe in Cairns in Tropical North Queensland.
From a young age, he was introduced to the smorgasbord of bush tucker tastes, and educated in other native flora uses.
“I grew up eating traditional foods like turtle and dugong – we’d get them for special occasions – and also the native fruits from North Queensland and spices,” he said.
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“My Dad taught me all of that as a kid. We’d be on a walk and he’d be going ‘you can eat this’ and showing me what it was used for and if it was used for medicinal purposes.
“(Tropical) green ants have a real citrusy, zesty flavour. As a kid, when we’d go up to Cairns and they’d be on the fence of my aunty’s house and I’d be walking along, picking them off and eating them.”
A process plant technician who has been a fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) gas plant operator in recent times, Isaac has dreamed of owning his own restaurant and bar with a bush foods-inspired menu for many years.
That dream became a reality last December when he opened Virtue Bar and Eats in a prime position in Mooloolaba’s Landmark building on The Esplanade, opposite the entrance to Loo With A View.
“It’s probably been 10 years – 10 years of ‘this is what I want to do’ but I’ve not found the space to do it or not been in the financial space to do it,” said the father of two girls, aged almost five and five months.
“Then everything just lined up with the right place, and financially it lined up for me. I just took the leap and was just over working FIFO.
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“It was something I saw missing in the market. I knew from my personal experience of these ingredients and how good they are.
“For me, also it’s about getting the food on the plate that gets people’s minds to open up to other things and eventually, down the track, that leads to other conversations that probably need to be had in Australia.”
Visit Sunshine Coast CEO Matt Stoeckel said First Nations culture and heritage was a big part of the state government’s Towards 2032 Tourism Plan, and an area with huge potential for the Sunshine Coast.
“A great way to share this culture is through food,” he said.
“Importantly, we know from research conducted by Tourism Australia that experiencing Indigenous foods is a highly sought-after experience by visitors. So, it’s great to see bush foods being showcased on the menu at venues here on the Sunshine Coast and it is sure to broaden minds and palates.”
Any brief perusal of the menu indicates Virtue is no ordinary restaurant. Even the popular breakfast offerings are intriguing, when eggs benedict comes with pepperberry cured salmon, Davidson plum chutney is added to eggs your way, and the Mexican huevos rancheros fried egg with bush tomato and ham hock boast sides of warrigal greens, green olive pico and wattleseed damper.
Isaac readily rattles off a host of other little-known ingredients being used: saltbush, bush tamarind, quandong, native ginger, bush apple, lemon myrtle, native bush honey and aniseed myrtle.
“I was taught to cook by my mum. I just know what works and what doesn’t work,” he said.
“Many, many years ago, I worked in hospitality in bartending and I’ve just got a real passion and love for food and cooking.
“I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant or cafe. I’ve worked FIFO for the last 10 years and I took the leap and it’s going really well.
“We pride ourselves on our good vibe that we’ve got going there. Everyone gets a really good experience from our staff.
“I’ve got an amazing head chef, Chris Wilmot. It’s been a breath of fresh air for him.
“He’s cooked everything there is to cook but he’s never cooked with these ingredients. We sit down together and brainstorm. I throw some ideas at him and he’s like, ‘Yep, that’ll work for sure’. His extensive knowledge and experience of food and cooking brings it all together.
“He works his magic in the kitchen and brings my ideas and suggestions to life.”
Isaac said Virtue was just about to launch its spring menu, featuring native proteins – crocodile, kangaroo and emu – that previously were only available at the highly Instagrammable Degustation Dinners, held on the last weekend of every month.
Blackboard special are always available, featuring specially sourced bush foods as ‘hero ingredients’, but the new-season menu will honour more of the favourite dishes as fixed items.
“Every item on our menu has a native ingredient in it,” Isaac enthused.
“There are intense flavours there. I don’t see that anywhere around the Sunshine Coast – nowhere that is doing it to the level that we’re doing It.
“It’s for people to try something different from just a chicken parmie or a steak, and I can guarantee if they do try it they will like it.
“We’re also incorporating our native ingredients into our cocktails, all our sauces and everything like that, which we make in-house.”
The kitchen sources the native ingredients through various suppliers, including regional farms and from celebrated chef, cookbook author, public speaker and educator Aunty Dale Chapman, founder of Forest Glen-based My Dilly Bag.
The proof of the freshness is in the (fingerlime panna cotta) pudding.
Isaac said a sauce made using fresh ingredients in the past 24 hours will always taste much better than the same recipe made from anything from a jar that’s been sitting on the shelf for a while.
But he does play favourites among the bush-foods bounty.
“I love Davidson plum – the tartness of it,” he said.
“It suits my tastebuds. It’s a little bit sweet, a little bit sour.
“I love wattleseed and the earthiness of it. Pepperberry, too – it’s so intense. When they crush it up, it was used medicinally by Indigenous people for toothaches, because it actually numbs the mouth.
“I love lemon myrtle, too. We use that heaps.
“We make our own sugar syrups with all of these ingredients for our cocktails: lemon myrtle sugar syrup, Davidson plum sugar syrup, wattleseed sugar syrup.
“There’s so many more ingredients that I’m looking at sourcing. But for a lot of the ingredients, there’s no farms that are farming them. They are all foraged ingredients.
“That’s what we want to change, too. We want to actually be able to empower a lot of traditional landowners so that they can set up a farm and grow these ingredients if they’ve got someone to supply them to, like myself or other restaurants.”
The next Native Degustation Dinner is on Saturday, August 26, from 5-8.30pm: a five-course menu of native-infused dishes, matched with five cocktails using Australian Indigenous fruits and botanicals.
And nothing washes down bone marrow and seared kangaroo-stuffed Yorkshire pudding better than a Davidson plum gin sour.
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