Hello and welcome to Table Talks by Tadier Life's Food and Drink podcast. I'm

Lara Prendergars. I'm Olivia Potts. And today we've joined by Sky Gindal, the Australian chef best

known for her work as food editor for Vogue and for winning a Michelin star at the Peterham Nurseries

Cafe. She's the founder of Spring at Somerset House and the culinary director of Heckfield Place.

Sky, welcome to our podcast. Thank you for having me.

Sky, tell us about food in Australia when you were growing up.

Well, it was very different from here because I suppose everything that kind of grows naturally and happily in Australia is much more tropical.

So I grew up in a macrobiotic household.

So food was incredibly important in my house, but not particularly delicious.

And surrounding me, and when I think about Australia and the food of Australia, I think about

tropical fruits, mangoes, avocados, pineapples, light cheese, passion fruit, macadamia nuts, lots of fish,

lots of salads.

It's pretty easy to be healthy in Australia because the weather's warm.

And I think your palate naturally lends towards kind of healthier, lighter food.

And you'd say you grew up in a macrobiotic household.

For those less familiar with macrobiotics, tell us what that was actually like.

Quite challenging, actually.

So macrobiotics is a traditional Japanese way of eating that involves 60% grain,

but very no dairy at all, no meat, very little fish, lots of acidic and fermented foods, and whole grains.

And so it's quite brown, and we were always trying to escape from home and always eat whatever we could. And so actually probably when we left home, our diet was worse than it

should have been because we were so excited to eat anything that was chocolate or sticky iced buns

or milkshakes. But it is a kind of diet that's based on health.

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