Kitchenhand

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
Kitchenhand is a bright and bubbly caterer-cum-cafe that occupies a long and attractive shop just a two-step diversion from Jetty Road. Ostensibly the food has a home-made feel, though if you could find food this good at home you’d never eat out. The store’s beautifully clean layout could have been lifted from a Donna Hay cookbook, with tall white letters spelling out Kitchenhand on one wall, the other lined with perspex cases filled with Greek and Italian biscuits. Continue past the colourful antipasto selection to the blond wood communal table. Here you can enjoy a coffee while choosing from the specials scrawled across the violet feature wall in white chalk.

Kitchenhand specialises in takeaway meals and catering, and the option to eat-in gives you a chance to sample the tucker on offer. The lengthy refrigerated cabinet contains the antidote to a last minute dinner including almond chicken (a mildly spiced Indian dish, richly flavoured with almond and saffron) and a modern take on moussaka (half an eggplant filled with seasonal vegies and topped with cream and potato mash). All dishes come with convenient instructions such as “warms well in microwave” or “heat for 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees. Serve with rice.” My only instructions to enjoying Kitchenhand are “serve often.”

Jennifer Miller