The Next Superfoods May Come From Australia | Travel

The Kakadu peach? It isn’t sweet. It isn’t even juicy. Unlike the garden-variety peach, which likely originated in China and spread to Europe, the endemic Australian fruit is earthy with botanical notes—and it’s only now that international tourists can taste it.

Last December, the Northern Territory-based startup Kakadu Kitchen released its canned Kakadu peach bellini. Made in collaboration with Altd Spirits, an alcohol-free distilling company in Sydney, it’s the first commercial use of the rare an-marabula, as the stone fruit is called in Kundjeyhmi, a local Kakadu dialect.

When I sit down for dinner in Kakadu National Park in May, I join a select few who’ve gotten to try the limited-edition beverage. Just 300 cases were made available, so Cooinda Lodge in the park’s center is one of the few places to serve it—the result of a partnership between the Indigenous-owned hotel and Kakadu Kitchen’s founder, Bininj Aboriginal chef Ben Tyler. Along with his extended family, Tyler ethically harvested the peaches from his community in the heart of Kakadu National Park, a 7,500-square-mile landscape rich with monsoon forests, rocky red gorges and dramatic waterfalls.

“Our people have a cultural connection to native ingredients,” says Tyler. “They’re not just a plant that we get from [our traditional] country —each ingredient has a story and the culture from each location.”

Each dird (full moon), Tyler and Cooinda Lodge’s executive chef Philip Foote host a four-course Bininj menu that explores Kakadu’s seasonal native flavors, with dishes such as smoked barramundi (a whitefish) with crème fraiche and Davidson plum spritz, or swamp buffalo cooked in an earth oven with bunya nuts and pickled lily stems.

Chances are you’ve never heard of most of the ingredients that Tyler uses, let alone tasted them. Until recently, “bush tucker,” or Australian wild food, was associated with overcooked kangaroo steaks served at roadside stops or witchetty grubs found on guided hikes. But thanks to Aboriginal chefs, entrepreneurs and growers like Tyler who are championing its use, bush tucker is now making its way onto menus across the country in more nuanced and unexpected ways, with ingredients like the Kakadu peach poised to become the next açaí.