A New Native

Australia’s indigenous ingredients belong on shelves and in our everyday lives, says Orana chef JOCK ZONFRILLO. How to get there?

- Jock Zonfrillo

There’s an Italian side to my family and a Scottish side. I enjoy the simple act of eating boiled potatoes and mince because I understand the Scottish culture. Likewise, I understand the whole ruckus that is a family meal for Italians. I understand why there’s spaghetti on the walls and why people are always yelling. This has always been the missing link for me in Australia. If you don’t understand the culture of Australian people, and the traditional owners of this land, how can you begin to understand the food? And what it might become?

The first time I visited Australia was for a year in 1994. At the time, I had been cooking in dark and rainy London, working the three-star grind, 20 hours a day. I’d seen advertisements for Australia and it looked amazing. The beaches and blue sky – it seemed like a holiday every day. I came out for 12 months and worked at Forty One in Sydney. Wherever I’d worked before – including during my apprenticeship – we used the food around us. Back in Scotland when I was an apprentice at Turnberry hotel, my chef de partie taught me how to stalk deer in the forest, for example. He showed me which mushrooms, mosses and weeds you could eat and we’d construct a dish with what we’d collected. My expectation was that Australia wouldn’t be any different. There’s a culture here that’s 60,000 years old and, in my mind at least, Australians were élite foragers.

That first year in Sydney I never met an Aboriginal man or woman. When I went back to the UK, where I stayed for five years, I had a lot of time to think about that. I felt guilty about not having participated in the Indigenous culture at all. It may not have presented itself to me, but I also didn’t get off my arse and go out and find it.