Strait to the Plate
New series
Thursday 7.30pm, SBS Food
Strait to the Plate Credit:
One’s a white, skinny professional chef, a former heroin addict and sadly, no longer with us. The other’s a loud, proud Torres Strait Islander man, an actor who’s never been near a professional kitchen (or heroin, for that matter) and is, happily, very much alive. So what do Anthony Bourdain and Aaron Fa’aoso have in common?
“His documentaries were the inspiration for this show,” says Fa’aoso of his new series, Strait to the Plate. “Yes, I wanted to talk about food. But it also becomes that lens through which other things come up organically. Not that you want it to become a political show. But the reality is Torres Strait food sources are impacted by climate change. By pollution. And we’re impacted economically as well.”
Introducing mainstream Australia to the culture of the Torres Strait – both the islands and the Cape York coastal communities – was a driving motivation for Fa’aoso. We see plenty of food. But we also get plenty of art, history, science, politics, and traditional practices – all of it fascinating.
One of the most striking aspects is the long multicultural history of the area – very much reflected in the cuisine. “The pearling boom of the late 1800s had a massive impact on our culture,” Fa’aoso says. “The Chinese, the Japanese, the Malays, the Polynesian-Melanesian missionaries. There’s a really strong Indonesian influence, a long trading history. We’ve embraced all those cultures in our food. The irony is, when Pauline Hanson came on the scene saying we had to stop the Asians. I was like – Pauline! We’ve been dealing with the Asians since the 14th century!”
In Australia, we’re very used to food acting as a way to understand and embrace other cultures, but it’s always been migrant cultures. Why has it taken so long for us to do the same for First Nations?
“Racism!” Fa’aoso exclaims matter-of-factly. “Systemic racism. Mainstream Australia hasn’t wanted to acknowledge we exist – or if we do, that we have anything to offer. We talk about voice, truth, treaty. That’s why.”