Bush tucker restaurant a first for Newcastle

In a first for Newcastle, a local restaurant is today launching a new menu using only native Australian ingredients.

The Charlestown eatery, known as Fifth Element, is owned by Leanne Brooks whose family has links to the Wiradjuri people of Central New South Wales.

Ms Brooks says there is a strong market for native Australian foods, but believes they can be enjoyed in their own right, not just as a feature on a more European-style menu.

"I wanted to keep it pure," she said.

"I didn't want to mix it, I didn't want to have it adulterated with European foods, you know, kangaroo with garden salad for example.

"Through a lot of hard work, we've managed to source absolutely everything on the plate to be indigenous.

"Some of this stuff flew in from Cairns on Tuesday, some came in today from Kakadu."

Ms Brooks says she is hoping it will expose people to a variety of new foods, including those from the local indigenous community.

"A lot of people of Aboriginal descent don't even know what their native food was," she said.

"So I think 200 years of white-man settlement, we're losing that culture, we're losing that food and I wanted to do a way of not only introducing it and experiencing it, but also preserving that culture and teaching it to others."

Source: ABC News, 7 December 2012