An enriching experience
Malaysia Airlines’ loyalty programme, Enrich, has just unveiled its ‘Enrich Hearts Australia’ signature redemption campaign, in collaboration with Tourism Australia, at its ‘Enrich takes over Adelaide’ viewing party in Ruyi & Lyn, Bangsar Shopping Centre. Enrich will be offering redemption discounts on all Australian destinations on Malaysia Airlines in this campaign.
The two week campaign is for bookings made between 8 and 22 September 2016, for the travel period of 8 September 2016 until 15 January 2017.
And who better to represent the city’s exciting gourmet scene at the recent viewing party than chef Jock Zonfrillo who’s been redefining Australian cuisine as chef/owner of Restaurant Orana and Restaurant Blackwood. Zonfrillo, a Scot of Italian background, regards Australia as his spiritual home and has been based in Adelaide, which he describes as a sexy version of an Australian city, since the early noughties. At his restaurants and as headliner of Discovery Channel’s Nomad Chef, Zonfrillo’s raison d’être is to preserve and evolve Australian food culture, advocate progressive policies for Australian ingredients, assist indigenous enterprise, and create and innovate through research and development.
This epiphany dawned on him after he returned to Australia a second time: “During my first time in Australia, I realised I didn’t get to see or feel or taste Australia through the food so when I went back again, I started researching indigenous Australians and the food by talking to the people. The first chat I had with a busker called Jimmy led to more conversations with other indigenous people and what I found out was that they had a sophisticated cuisine which had an intrinsic connection to the land. So I started going out to learn by being among communities and that’s when I realised that I was in Australia for a reason.”
Orana means welcome in several aboriginal dialects and Zenfrillo celebrates the diversity of the land in the restaurant’s oeuvre: “Australian cuisines to me is a snapshot of traditional culture and today’s culture. We’re giving diners the essence of the traditional stories but at the same time you have the playfulness and new techniques that’s the settlers have brought. Inevitably it all comes back to the land and what the land gives us in Australia, that’s what we try to portray on a plate intertwined with all the stories.” And if the exciting, fascinating food served at Ruyi & Lyn was anything to go by, Zenfrillo extends a warm welcome indeed.