A Warm Welcome to Mindy Woods: Sharing Country, Culture, and Cuisine with the World
First Nations chef Mindy Woods has been named a Champion of Change for her work sharing native Australian ingredients with the world. Now it’s your turn.
From MasterChef to her acclaimed Byron Bay restaurant Karkalla, to her cultural and culinary experience Karkalla on Country, and now Culinary Wonderland, Woods is a proud Bundjalung Australian woman on a mission to welcome you into the world’s oldest food culture.
Whether it’s fusing ancient flavours with an instantly recognisable dish, or sharing new ways to season seafood or soup, Woods’ eyes light up when she talks about ingredients that Indigenous Australians have been using for thousands of years.
Finger lime. “We call itgulalung in Bundjalung Country. It is an incredibly aromatic citrus, it’s very zesty, but it pops like caviar in your mouth.”
Bunya nuts. “It’s a sweet, pine-tasting nut, with the texture of a chestnut and a beautiful creamy consistency. You can chuck them into a beautiful stew or make a beautiful gnocchi out of their flour. It’s a prehistoric food, it dates back to dinosaurs...”
Lemon myrtle. “It’s the most incredible culinary herb to work with because it has the highest citral content of any food – that beautiful lemony scent. I call it a lemon-scented bay leaf, throw it in your stocks and your stews.”
Macadamia nuts. “The original Australian nut. Did you know 99 per cent of all macadamia trees in the world can be traced back to one tree in Gympie? If you roast the macadamia up, and there’s a really easy secret to it – 120℃ for 120 minutes – they turn into the most beautiful caramelised nuts you’ve ever tasted in your life.”
Kangaroo. “It’s naturally low in fat, high in protein, really high in iron, and when it’s cooked well, it is a world-class meat. Whether you’re doing a quick seared steak or braising it down to make a native massaman curry, it’s a really great way to change people’s perception of native food.”
It’s this combination of passion, knowledge of Country and unique flavours that saw Woods named Champion of Change at the 2025 World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards in Turin, Italy. But it wasn’t always this way.
Before she opened Karkalla, before she became the first female indigenous chef to receive a Chef’s Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide, and before she made the first of two appearances on MasterChef, Woods had a very different career as a physiotherapist.
“In reality, I should have always done food,” Woods says with a laugh. “My best memories are being out on the beaches with my nan and the family as kids, foraging, harvesting, fishing and cooking on fire. We were always eating and cooking together.
“Food was a passion of mine, I never thought it could be a career. But I took the plunge 13 years ago now, and I’ve never looked back.”
For all the plaudits thrown her way, it might surprise you to learn that Woods has no formal chef training. “I get called a chef, but I’m a proud cook,” she says. “It just goes to show what opportunities there are in the food space for anyone who is truly passionate about it. And native food particularly is a very exciting space to work in. I now get to share stories that date back thousands of years, that have been handed down from my elders, and for the first time put them in a cookbook when I released Karkalla at Home last year.”
Karkalla restaurant – named after the native coastal succulent Woods would forage with her grandmother – was beloved for its bunya nut miso scallops and native green curry with chargrilled fish. But Woods closed the bricks and mortar restaurant in 2024 after five years, believing she could give people a more authentic experience by sharing her food on the land on which it grows.
“We were trying so hard to bring that experiential element into the restaurant. I was smoking things on coals and cooking little dampers on the tables, but to experience culture you have to be on Country. The only way to do it is to kick off your shoes and walk on Country together.”
That’s where her Karkalla on Country experiences began: immersive events combining a native-inspired menu with knowledge-sharing from local elders and a guided tour through a native food forest on Bundjalung Country (the traditional lands of the Bundjalung people, spanning from the Gold Coast to south of Byron Bay).
“We look at all the beautiful ingredients, we pick them, we taste them, we talk about their cultural, ecological, culinary and medicinal uses… And of course we have a big, beautiful long lunch at the end.”
Woods wants these experiences to elevate native food beyond ‘bush tucker’, to a point where it is revered both in Australia and internationally.
“Food is a universal language. To understand a culture you need to experience its food. We do that as Australians: we travel overseas, we love to experience the pizzas and pastas of Italy, the champagnes and cheeses of France. But we’re not celebrating our own food culture right here.”
Her work may have diversified across education, regenerative farming, sustainability and cultural programs, but cooking remains at the heart of everything Woods does. When she works with ancient native ingredients in her own modern kitchen, she loves taking things to the limit.
“I like to take foods to the absolute extreme in terms of flavour profile. I create flavour bombs that you can use in so many different ways. So I make a beautiful green curry paste, taking inspiration from a Thai green curry, but I’m using lemon myrtle, native ginger, native lemongrass and aniseed myrtle. Then I can use that as a curry base, a marinade or a dressing. You build up this flavour bomb up in your fridge then you’ve always got something to go to.”
Explore the Culinary Wonderland platform to try her recipes for yourself at home.
