Adelaide’s Orana named restaurant of the year
On Wednesday night, Gourmet Traveller awarded Adelaide’s Orana restaurant of the year.
It’s a big win for Orana and South Australia – it’s the first time the award has gone to a restaurant outside Melbourne or Sydney.
Glasgow-born owner and chef Jock Zonfrillo runs the the 10-table restaurant which opened in 2013 with a focus on native Australian ingredients and culture.
This is captured in both the menu and the non-profit organisation, the Orana Foundation, an entity that Zonfrillo describes as the “backbone” of the business.
“I wanted to make a change for Indigenous people and for their culture and for their standard of living and, to me, all I know is food,” Zonfrillo told Guardian Australia.
The foundation is critical.
“I certainly didn’t open Orana to become restaurant of the year or whatever,” he told Guardian Australia. “It was more about starting the foundation. We couldn’t start the foundation until we could actually display it – here’s what it looks like, here’s what it tastes like, here are the positive changes we can make through it.”
Zonfrillo has travelled around Australia and spent time with indigenous communities. His favourite native ingredients include sugar lerps, sweet and sour leaves and green ants.
He got into indigenous food when he had a long conversation with a busker in Circular Quay.
“It was a conversation that changed my life. It changed me as a person and it changed the way I cook,” Zonfrillo said from the stage. “And his parting words to me were, ‘Whatever you do, give back more than you take’ – and really that’s been the backbone of everything that we do.”
With a $1.25 million grant from the South Australian government and a partnership with the University of Adelaide, the plan is to build the array of 700 indigenous ingredients into an open source data base of 1000. There are also plans for a research and development facility analysing the taste and nutritional content of ingredients. Also, there will be a hub of skills training and development to support Indigenous Australians.
Sydney’s Fred’s, which opened last year in Paddington also won an award.
by Leon Gettler, August 24th 2017
Photo - Gourmet Traveller
