Sunshine Bistro opened on Level 19 of The Star Gold Coast with a short menu and a long memory. We cook coastal Australian food for people who notice details, above a casino that never sleeps.
The restaurant began as a supper club above a surf shop in Miami, Queensland. Six years and two relocations later, it landed inside The Star, where the bistro became a dining room and the supper club became a chef's table.
Twelve seats, one induction hob, a chalkboard menu. Forty guests a week, all by word of mouth.
A proper kitchen, a real wine fridge and the first reviews. The waiting list starts at three weeks and never really shrinks.
The resort offers us the top floor. We take it, on the condition the kitchen stays open to the room and the menu stays ours.
Second hat awarded. The cellar passes three hundred bins and the team grows to forty-two.
Architect Ingrid Killeen wrapped the dining room in curved timber ribs inspired by the hull of a fishing boat. No table sits further than four metres from a window.
Our bread comes from a two-person bakery in Burleigh that starts its ovens at 2 a.m. Our plates come from a ceramicist in Currumbin who fires them in batches of forty. Nothing on the table is anonymous.
Flour & Foam Bakery. Sixteen loaves a morning, never more.
Marlow Ceramics. Every plate is slightly different, on purpose.
Tap a marker to meet a supplier. The map is a live picture of this week's sourcing; it shifts with the seasons and the boats' luck.
Fourth-generation growers supplying our brassicas, heirloom carrots and the lemon myrtle that ends up in the dessert course. Deliveries arrive Tuesday and Friday, still warm from the field.
See them on the menuFish frames become fumet, bread ends become tomorrow's crumb, citrus peels go into the bar's cordials. What remains goes to a worm farm in the hinterland, which sends us back compost for the rooftop herbs.
We audit the restaurant's carbon output every quarter and publish the numbers here, whether or not they flatter us.
Where the kitchen team eats on their days off, from dumplings to dawn surf clubs.
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Six weeks of testing, forty rejected plates, one dish that survives to the card.
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Our sommelier's working list, from Granite Belt to the Barossa floor.
ReadWe hire for attitude before experience. The kitchen runs a four-day week for senior roles and every team member eats the menu on shift, because you can't sell what you haven't tasted.
Send your CVMore detail lives on the FAQ page , or ask the concierge at the door.
