Just Open: Gauge, South Brisbane

Like Doctor Who's tardis, all is not what it seems when you step through the doors at Gauge.

The second venue for Sourced Grocer owner Jerome Batten opened in Grey Street three weeks ago and looks like a standard, smart-casual cafe. It's compact with the obligatory communal table, slightly too loud music and a steady stream of takeaway coffee orders.

But in the elevated open kitchen there's no towel-flicking and kitchen hi-jinks. Rather it's calm and quiet – the three chefs, head chef Ollie Hansford (ex Stokehouse), Cormac Bradfield (head chef at Sourced Grocer) and sous chef Rob Wood (ex Stokehouse), studying each plate with brow-furrowing intensity before deeming it fit to hit the pass.

The second clue that despite appearances this is no everyday cafe, is the menu, which meanders from dishes that may or may not be breakfast – cucumber kimchi, house seeded bread, soft egg, cured pork cheek, skyr and confit heritage tomatoes – to mains such as squid, roast gem lettuce, fried wakame, sea parsley and basil.

The food is served in beautiful earthy, organic designer bowls and plates (on loan, Batten tells us, from mate Ryan Squires at Esquire, his own commissioned set having been delayed). This food is exciting stuff, original and unexpected, punching way above the simple surrounds and the casual service.

Hansford's experience pre-Stokehouse was gained in Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK. He left Stokehouse in early March to set up Gauge with Batten and Bradfield. Wood joined the kitchen a fortnight ago. According to Hansford, the Gauge ethos is to be "quirky and left-of-centre".

"It's not for people looking for your average eggs benedict," Hansford says.

Certainly left-of-centre is the replacement for cafe staple banana bread – here a thick burnished black slab of fermented garlic bread with a caramelly quenelle of burnt butter and burnt vanilla. It's both savoury and sweet, the ingredients, including treacle, ash, and whole vanilla pods, burned then "blitzed".

"We made a couple of really disgusting versions when we were experimenting with it but it's already a favourite of a few regulars. It really divides people – some think of it as savoury, others sweet," Hansford says.

The kitchen also cure their own guanciale, ferment corn and cucumber for kimchi, roll their own oats, and make skyr, an Icelandic yoghurt with a pleasantly bitter edge.

Menu prices range from $8 to $22, with the team making as much as they can in-house.

"It takes a lot more time and effort – we work really long hours, but that's our passion. We want everyone to come and be wowed by the food. We want it to give a sense of place and the person who made it, like home cooking on a higher scale."

A liquor licence should be approved by next week, with Thursday, Friday and Saturday dinners a possibility.

The restaurant has no phone or website, so tables are luck of the draw.

77 Grey Street, South Brisbane. Open daily from 7am-3pm.