Grubs, Emu Eggs on ‘Bush Tucker’ Menu

Start with witchetty grub soup. Next comes emu-egg pasta, with warrigal greens and yams on the side. Finish with wattleseed ice cream and quandong peach pie.

This is “bush tucker,” native food that kept the aborigines satisfied and healthy for thousands of years but was virtually ignored by white settlers, who introduced European plants and animals.

Now a few chefs have transformed bush tucker into haute cuisine, Australian style.

Delicacies like char-grilled yabbie, a freshwater crustacean, and kangaroo fillet have crept onto otherwise conventional menus. More adventurous restaurateurs serve indigenous food exclusively.

“It’s nutritious and rich in flavor,” said chef Andrew Fielke. “Because it naturally belongs to Australia, there’s no need to use fertilizers or pesticides, either.

“Australia has some great multicultural cuisines, but it’s time that we started using our own natural foods.”

Fielke opened the Red Ochre Grill in Adelaide, capital of South Australia, in July, displacing an Italian bistro on a street dominated by Asian and Mediterranean eating houses.

Jean-Paul Bruneteau, born in France and raised in Australia, serves pan-fried stingray, bunya-nut vegetable torte and smoked emu salad at Riberries, his Sydney restaurant named for a native fruit related to the clove.

In October, he plans to open another Riberries in London, using ingredients flown from Australia.

Bruneteau started experimenting with native foods 10 years ago and now produces a cuisine that blends bush tucker with European and Asian styles.

His knowledge comes from the journals of European explorers who observed aboriginal traditions in the 19th Century, and from aborigines who have retained the old customs.

“At school, I was taught that the aborigines had little to eat and barely survived,” Bruneteau said. “But that’s nonsense.”

He argues that the aboriginal diet was superior to that of the Europeans who colonized Australia two centuries ago.

“English convicts were sent to Australia for stealing loaves of bread,” he said, “but the aborigines had access to a wonderful variety of seafood, meats and fruits.”

The chef said he was amazed to learn that the first settlers nearly starved while awaiting supplies from England, rather than learn from the aborigines.

Vic Cherikoff, who runs the small but growing Bush Tucker Supply Co. from his home in the Sydney suburbs, laments the emphasis of Australian agriculture on imported crops and animals.

“European farming has caused great environmental damage with the cutting down of forests, soil erosion and the overuse of chemicals and irrigation,” he said.

Australia’s only native commercial crop is the macadamia nut, which was developed only after farmers in Hawaii spotted its potential early in this century.

More progress has been made with indigenous meat production. Crocodiles, which taste like chicken, are protected in the wild but also raised on farms. So, too, is the emu, a large, flightless bird that tastes something like a wild turkey.

Kangaroos are shot to save pasture for sheep and cattle. Some states prohibit the sale of kangaroo meat, but where it is legal, it is promoted as a lean, low-cholesterol alternative to venison.

Cherikoff hopes indigenous foods ultimately will be raised with as much attention as the imports. Meanwhile, much of his produce grows wild on bushland owned by aboriginal tribes or on unused parts of farms and ranches.

Some is even gathered in suburbs of Sydney, a city of 3.8 million.

“People have native food trees and plants growing in their back yards, but just don’t realize it,” Cherikoff said.

“Usually they are more than happy for us to take the stuff away for free.”