About Us

Restaurant Orana is home to Chef and Owner Jock Zonfrillo’s intimate dining room where he uses Indigenous ingredients to showcase Australia’s modern gastronomic identity. Having been awarded Australian Restaurant of the Year 2018 and 2019 has helped us give Indigenous foods and culture more awareness and recognition, and shift the mindset around the acknowledgement of just how special the oldest surviving culture in the world is, and it’s right here on our doorstep.

In Australia we are surrounded by delicious Indigenous ingredients that don’t require irrigation, are organically and naturally grown on country, and that the First Australians have eaten for over 60,000 years.

The question for years has been why aren’t these foods more widely consumed. We don’t have all the answers but for the past years we’ve been thinking and working with Elders on country to give their culture a voice through food, and a meal at Restaurant Orana is an insight into those shared learnings.

Taking his curiosity and respect for the Aboriginal people, the oldest surviving culture on earth, Jock celebrates all elements of Australia – from the ancient to the modern – and in the process has created a cuisine that is uniquely his own. The Aboriginal philosophy to heal and be healed by the land and to always give back more than you take, strongly influences Zonfrillo’s culinary philosophy.

Restaurant Orana’s menu honours Australia’s incredibly varied food history, celebrates the nutritional properties of Indigenous ingredients, respects the produce’s relationship with the land and strives to integrate all this to define Australia’s modern gastronomic identity.