Blink and you could miss it – Underbar is a hidden treasure

AN inconspicuous shopfront on Doveton Street North, Ballarat, houses a Good Food Guide one-hat fine dining restaurant, seating 12 at the table and four at the bar, open only on Friday and Saturday nights.

Underbar, Swedish for wonderful, recently achieved number 41 in the first Gault & Millau Top 100 Australian Restaurant Guide.

Chef and co-owner Derek Boath said it has given Underbar national recognition with diners coming from Melbourne and Sydney to experience their hospitality.

“The Guide definitely has that spread throughout the country that gives people outside of Ballarat the ability to find us,” he said.

“We find that anywhere from a third to half of our guests are now from out of town.”

The diners get a pre-dinner drink, followed by a number of snacks, an amuse-bouche, then five courses, and a couple of sweet courses to finish off the meal.

“This generally takes between threeand-a-half to four-and-a-half hours depending on our guests,” said Mr Boath.

“We don’t take walk ins as we want to offer our guests a bit of privacy.

“Food and wine are a very powerful medium for an experience so we are trying to create those lasting memories for people especially as a lot of our diners come here for special occasions.”

Dinner costs $155 per head for food with matching wine an extra $75.

Mr Boath and his wife Lucy Taylor as joint owners crunched the numbers and two nights a week sustains the work-life balance they are after.

If offers them the ability to stay in control with everything sourced, prepared, cooked and jointly served by Mr Boath.

He doesn’t get a wage for the 65 hours a week he spends in the restaurant saying that is large part of how small businesses exist.

He looks after his daughter three days a week, while Ms Taylor works a full-time week in four days in corporate industry.

It’s about earning an honest living and having a quality of life outside of work.

“We do make a little bit of money, we are not making millions of dollars but we are managing to pay the bills,” Mr Boath said.

“I love what I do and it means I am fully in control of my own destiny, I cook what I want to cook, we put what we want to drink on the menu, listen to the music we like, it’s a perfect life.