The little restaurant that could: a dining concept to change the world

Reginaldo Gallina​ is like Bubba in Forrest Gump as he tells me all the different ways you can cook a cauliflower. “Cauliflower rice, cauliflower steak, roast cauliflower…” The list goes on.

It’s Thursday morning and Regi​, as he likes to be called, has just received several crates of the vegetable that would have ended up in landfill. His job is to create five different menus for the upcoming week using the random assortment of perfectly edible foods otherwise bound for the bin.

“It’s challenging because sometimes we don’t have all the ingredients, but I love it,” says the chef of 30 years.

It’s a normal Thursday at Everybody Eats.

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This eatery in Onehunga has a unique definition of “normal”. It’s the best parts of a restaurant, a charity and a family all rolled into one. Manager Amanda Butland​ says it’s all about “fighting food waste, food poverty and social isolation.”

The restaurant-quality menu is decided by the surplus food that’s rescued from suppliers and hospitality businesses that week, before it goes to waste.

The price of a meal is decided by the diner. A pay-as-you-feel model and an unmanned Eftpos machine means someone who wants to pay restaurant prices can do that, while someone who is struggling to pay for food that week can eat for a dollar.

The seating is generally decided by what space is free. You can book a table for you and your friends, but the true Everybody Eats experience is showing up and getting put at a big, long table with a group of soon-to-be friends.

Oh and, apart from a few paid workers, the servers, kitchen hands, dishwashers and guest chefs are all volunteers.

The week Stuff visits one of those staff, executive chef Donovan Mucke​, is sorting produce in the morning sun. A popular food box subscription service had overstocked on spinach, so hundreds of small bags of the leafy green ended up in the collection from food rescue charity KiwiHarvest​.

Mucke isn’t impressed with the plastic waste he’s left with, or the bigger issue of food waste that Everybody Eats is fighting against.

The magnitude of food waste in New Zealand is an unknown beast. The best statistics we have are rough estimates, but even those are shocking. $3.1 billion​ of food is thrown out by NZ households annually. Up to 40% of produce doesn’t even leave the farm, partly because of cosmetic standards set by supermarkets.

Something that does have solid stats is the cost of living crisis. Grocery prices have increased by 12.5%​. Produce prices are up 22%.​ Food insecurity is real, and it’s the people at the bottom who feel it first.

While the economic situation is dire, at least things in the food waste space are changing. The government is funding research and developing initiatives to quantify and reduce food waste. The Kai Commitment is an agreement between big food and dairy corporations to start cleaning up their act, as well as NGOs working hard in the food waste space to make that happen.

Love Food Hate Waste manager Sarah Pritchett​ says food waste in hospitality hasn’t been addressed much yet.

“I see [Everybody Eats] educating other people, not only the customers, but also other people in the hospitality industry,” says Pritchett​.

Mucke is no stranger to hospo. He’s been a corporate and private chef, working for some well known institutions. It was a volunteer shift at Everybody Eats that changed his career trajectory.

“I just took on a guest chef night. I had fun making a brand new menu from scratch in the morning and serving it that night.

“Then all of a sudden, I realised I was helping hundreds of people in a pretty vulnerable area of Auckland,” recounts Mucke.

When the executive chef role came up, he jumped on it.

“I’m happier being here than I am somewhere where the only goal is to make money, money, money, right?”

Happiness is a common thread that runs throughout this restaurant.

I return on Monday night to see a meal service in action, and find the kitchen filled with banter, Gallina laughing in the middle of it all. The volunteers are a mix of regulars alongside Onehunga High School hospitality students there to learn about the industry.

Manager Amanda Butland​ gives them a briefing before service starts. She puts the volunteers into a buddy system. New and regular volunteers are paired up and given a section of the room to serve, and all of the training is done between the buddies.

Her advice to them? “My trick is to always keep calm, and then we spread that vibe.”

Her ethos is treating every volunteer differently according to their ability, and treating every diner the same.

“The man in the Armani suit is getting the same service as someone who might be in her pyjamas and Ugg boots because she didn’t have any clothes to wear.

“She’ll walk out feeling a bit better about herself, and the Armani guy will walk out feeling a little bit more humble, which is kind of bringing it all down to this normal level,” says Butland.

With a perspective like that, it comes as no surprise to hear that Butland will also be managing an upcoming Everybody Eats location in Glen Innes.

“Glen Innes is going to be a challenge and a whole different kettle of fish, but we’re taking the same model, the same values and attitude.

“You just kill them with kindness and feed them.”

Opening in late July, the Glen Innes location will be similar to the Onehunga spot, with a custom fitout, room for about 60 diners, and a cafe operating out of the space during the day.

New operations manager Nic Harty-Morris says Glen Innes is an ideal spot.

“We’ve chosen Glen Innes as our next location for a number of reasons: the high concentration of social housing nearby, the cultural diversity of Glen Innes and the surrounding suburbs, the lack of healthy dinner options in the area and the fantastic main road store frontage,” says Harty-Morris.

Back in Onehunga, ahead of the doors opening for the night, Butland introduces me to Leslie, an Onehunga local, a weekly diner and the friendly “unofficial doorman”.

“He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. Everybody Eats is for the people. They work with scraps, and they bring out a Michelin star three-course meal,” Leslie tells me.

I’ve had a look at their previous menus, and I have to agree with Leslie. This is some fancy food.

A few nights before my visit, they started with aromatic coconut rice salad and pomegranate glaze. The main dish was seared venison ragout with crispy broccolini and a garlic butter baguette. And to finish? Chocolate dusted wonton cups with cocoa whip and caramelised pears.

Everybody Eats is solving some big food problems, but they’re causing another one for me – food envy.

OK, stop drooling. Back to Monday.

Come six o’clock, the diners stream in and the room is quickly filled with the hum of conversation.

I’m sitting at a table with a man suspicious of the government, a girl who loves cats, and Nic, the new operations manager of Everybody Eats. It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke, but there is no punchline. Only interesting conversations over a delicious meal.

Gallina decided on cauliflower steaks as a vegetarian option to the chicken parmigiana main. Mucke put the spinach to work in a basil pesto. Butland tells me it’s one of its busiest nights in almost four years, with 137 diners served in an hour and a half.

Near the end of the night, she thanks some diners on their way out.

“It looked stressful tonight!” says one of them.

“It’s what I live for,” replies Butland.