A Journey

Appears in

By James Viles

Published 2016

  • About

What is biota? Not just the restaurant – biota is the plant and animal life of a region, our region. To me, biota is a notion, a philosophy that guides us towards mother nature and helps us create from our local farms, forests and gardens. We find ourselves making the most of every ingredient. To some this would be called a sustainable approach; to us it’s just a way of life.

But it didn’t start like that for me. At the age of 24 I was fresh into a restaurant in Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, a small town 690 metres above sea level with a yet-to-be-discovered diverse microclimate. I thought I had found the food that I wanted to cook, food that was pretty damned special – when, in fact, what I was cooking was food with no home and no heart. I was working among a bounty of streams, wild meat, weeds and lush roadside fruit, in a region that was untouched, raw and ready and I didn’t even know it. I don’t remember visiting, talking to and learning from the surrounding farms. I bought meat from a local butcher, but I didn’t ask where it was from. I certainly don’t remember asking what breed it was and what it was fed or for how long. I didn’t know that the oxalis growing in the cobbled steps outside the kitchen door was one of the most beautiful weeds I could find; I didn’t even notice its tiny yellow flowers come to life for six weeks of the year. So what happened?