Nornie Bero’s New Cookbook Is Another Chapter in Her Quest To Make Ancient Australian Ingredients Everyday-Use

Nornie Bero, the trailblazing Torres Strait Islander chef behind Melbourne diners Mabu Mabu and Big Esso, has just released her inaugural cookbook.

Called Mabu Mabu, it celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities through food. Bero’s life story shares the pages with a native pantry guide and more than 50 recipes from her restaurants and home kitchen. Every ingredient comes with an explanation and is incorporated into one or more of the book’s recipes – which include wattleseed damper, hot seaweed eggs and barbequed emu.

To fully appreciate Bero, you need to understand where she comes from. Born a proud Komet woman on Mer (or Murray) Island, she spent her childhood foraging. Every morning she’d walk along the reef spearing octopus for breakfast, before spending the day eating oysters off the rocks and picking fruit.

“Island kids spend all their time at the beach or swimming in freshwater creeks. As a kid you just come home before it’s dark because the old people tell you that devils come and steal children,” she says.

Bero’s father, George (or Gai), instilled a love of food in her from a young age. A single parent from the time she was 18 months old, he taught her how to make pumpkin damper, which she delivered before school for payment in marbles. She includes a recipe of it in her book, saying “This is a huge island favourite and I’ll always remember making it with my dad.”

Mabu Mabu means “help yourself” in Meriam Mir. It’s the equivalent of shouting, “dig in”, but it carries a double meaning here. In his mid-thirties, George developed severe arthritis and became unable to work. Father and daughter’s roles were reversed: Bero has been looking out for them both – and making her own way in the world – since her early teens.

“My dad got sick very young and he never got to achieve anything – and he was a big dreamer. He made me proud to be who I was. I achieve what I want to achieve, but in a way I achieve stuff for him, too,” she says.

During high school, Bero went to live with George’s sister, Aba, in Townsville. Other Island kids would stay with Aba too; she was known as “Grandma Garden Street”. Her place became a sort of educational halfway house where they could continue to speak language and access traditional fruits and seeds from her garden. This way, even in the mainstream education system, culture was never far away. Mabu Mabu’s Aba’s tea blend is named in her honour (the tea recipe is in the cookbook).

By the time Bero was 16 years old, she had left school and was picking bananas on farms in Innisfail, south of Cairns. She would drive workers to the farm each morning on her L-plates and act as designated driver when they went to the local pub. It was her first taste of hospitality.

“I just fell in love with it,” says Bero. “Food is always in our families. A community like ours resolves around food – planting it, growing it, picking it and then sharing it together too.”

Bero completed year 12 at Tafe and then moved to Melbourne, determined to remain in hospitality and break away from what she says is a common Torres Strait trajectory of having children at a young age and staying put.

“It was really difficult for me to get a job because my look wasn’t good enough. I went to agencies to try to get a job and even they looked at me horribly and said, ‘You need to do something with your hair,’” she recalls.

Instead, she ended up undertaking a house-painting apprenticeship, followed by a stint building and repairing semitrailers. Eventually, she landed a position at the Grandview Hotel in Melbourne’s Fairfield.

“As soon as I got my foot in the door, I stuck with it,” she says. “I learned on the job the whole way through, because I didn’t have the money or know-how to pay for an apprenticeship.”

Most of the venues where she worked are now closed – including Birdman Eating in Fitzroy, where she spent years cooking behind the scenes. The last place she worked before opening her first shop was Ceres. She helped its kitchen staff switch to cooking what they grew on-site, and made their condiments and other products.

“It was like, ‘Why aren’t we making more stuff here, and why isn’t it Australian?’ I learned a lot at Ceres, but I wanted to do more for Australia and be proud of that,” she says.

In 2018, she opened Mabu Mabu in South Melbourne Market, selling condiments, spice mixes and teas made from native Australian ingredients. By the following year, Mabu Mabu had moved to Yarraville and expanded into a cafe. At the end of 2021, she opened Big Esso in Federation Square, offering a full menu that heroes native Australian ingredients from her diverse kitchen and all-Aussie bar. And Bero assures anyone new to the cuisine, “Kaikai bor yumpla debe lag lag” – or in English, “Our food is delicious.”

She turns 43 this year. She’s been in hospitality since she was 18, but she isn’t slowing down. In fact, she never stops. Her cookbook is out just days after she’s wrapped up a pop-up restaurant at the Australian Open. Within a couple of weeks, she’ll have Mabu Mabu’s native Australian sauces, spices and teas stocked at Woolworths.

It’s a game changer to see hard-to-find native Indigenous ingredients in a large-scale commercial setting. As Bero says, the more we talk about and ask for them, the more we will see them. It’s as simple as supply and demand.

“You can go to the local markets now and find emu. You can even get croc now in Coles,” she says. “Going into supermarkets for dry goods is just a starter for me. The next step would be getting the fresh stuff in, like warrigal greens and saltbush.”

But Bero’s mission isn’t only to introduce native Australian ingredients to every home kitchen; it’s to help change the mindset of generation of people whose aspirations are often set at “just passing high school”.

“I never thought I would achieve any of this in my lifetime,” she says. “So I want people to read this book and think they can achieve anything. Anyone who really wants to do something different with their life should go out and do it. That’s the message of this book.”

Mabu Mabu by Nornie Bero is published by Hardie Grant Books (hardback, $45) and available in stores now. Buy it here.