Darryl Naidu is the co-founder and director of the New Normal Bar + Kitchen. He is a chartered professional engineer who took some time off to help create a measurably less wasteful future and now leads a team to help us all eat better – while still taking time for good quality conversation.

What is the purest thing you have ever tasted? Seawater. There is nothing purer than a tumble in the ocean, expecially when you are at the mercy of natural forces and not exactly sure when you will be allowed up for air.

What was your first experience with sustainable eating? Maybe not my first, though certainly the most influential, was a dinner with Paul Iskov and the team at Fervor, another featured Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery institution. It was at an earlier point in development of our own concept and helped firm in our mind that a completely local offering is within our reach. It is an endemic experience that I believe truly embodies Australian culture and recommend it to anyone visiting our corner of the world.

What do you love most about what you do? We are tinkering with a process. I love making changes in the way we work and love nothing more than seeing these commitments influence others.

What do you consider the most overrated ingredient? Anything that has spent more than a few days in transit.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever been taught? The concept of a circular economy. It embodies all of the ‘green’ thoughts I have had over the last decade and if it can be developed correctly then I think it holds the answers to economic prosperity in an increasingly resource-constrained world.

Is there anything you don’t particularly care to eat? Now that I understand the ecological cost of meat, I find it very unappealing.

Are there any mentors or food heroes you would like to thank? Absolutely. I have been very fortunate to grow up with role models in my family that demonstrated a passion for their fields and an insatiable work ethic that made them the business people they are today, while never compromising on personal values.

As for heroes in the work that New Normal is pursuing, the projects that Ellen MacArthur and her foundation coordinate in developing circular concepts are providing continuous guidance. As far as food heroes go, I have to start with our young team at New Normal; each one brings a huge amount of passion and commitment to the cause. Paul Iskov is probably our favourite influence when it comes to Australian food.

What are your favourite books or cookbooks? Yotam Ottolenghi features heavily for us at home. We love his style and I think he can be credited for influencing a significant increase in plant-based foods in the diets of many around the world. Also being from a region with a Mediterranean climate, almost all of the fresh produce featured is available locally. Boomtown 2050 by Richard Weller and UWA publishing was hugely influential for me in the development of this concept.

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing what you are doing? Probably still working as an engineer. It’s a profession that I love and feel very proud to be involved in. It teaches you to look holistically at the process, something I wish everyone was better at.

What does success mean to you? Being able to wake up one day with confidence that economic prosperity has been decoupled from resource consumption.

What is your current obsession, the thing you think about at 3am? For the last year: “How do I pay off all of these debts and make room to start paying myself?” Currently however, we are thinking of ways to extend access to nourishing, fresh food to everyone. One of the barriers that we face as a kitchen is that not everyone can afford to pay for a meal that incorporates the cost of labour and our overheads. We want to bypass the knowledge gap in seasonality and provide access to the produce we use in our kitchen and guidance on what to do with food available locally. We have many ideas that we will implement with the time and money.

What are the qualities you most admire in others? Commitment, accountability and an open mind. You cannot achieve anything worthwhile without any of these qualities.

Can you tell us something we don’t know about you? I am a chartered professional engineer by training.

If you could eat only one thing today, what would it be? Anything made by my fiancé, Charlotte. She is fantastically crafty in the kitchen and can pull a delicious meal from nowhere with very little on hand. Nothing goes to waste.

What do you see when you think of the cuisine of your own country? It is developing to embrace indigenous values and concepts of self-sufficiency, though we still have a long way to go. It destroys me to see what is currently considered ‘Modern Australian’ cuisine. Steak and chips passes muster and this really needs to change.

Which producer or supplier really brightens your day? There are so many, though to choose one I need to focus on a particular business partner who is taking huge risks to change the world for the better. Currently the work that Carly Hardy is doing with her start-up Kooda really has us excited and we are so glad that she is doing it here in Perth.

She has created a model for decentralized organic waste recycling, which assumes the lowest ecological cost to returning all organic material back to the nutrient cycle in its most complete form. I wager that this is the most ecologically efficient system currently available in an urban environment around the world.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? After some consultation I have been told that I often ask, “What’s the opportunity cost?” It is clear to me now why I don’t get invited out much these days.

What do you think the food of the future will look like? Hopefully a lot like it was in years past before we truly explored the possibilities of globalization. I know this sounds somewhat of an anti-industrialist dream, but let me explain. I see the food of the future being at least as nourishing as it is today and I am certainly not about deprivation, though I believe the true cost of anything can be realized. Technology will hopefully empower the individual rather than corporate interests in the value chain of food. This ideal is perfectly embodied by the Open Food Network. It is a not-for-profit, open source platform to aid the local distribution of fresh produce. I recommend all readers look into it.

In this developed world of transparency aided by technology I see a higher plain of human existence where we do things because we should rather than because we can. Of course, we can fly a pomegranate from USA to Australia, though maybe we can be perfectly content waiting for the season and find something else to use in the meantime. We have very rapidly lost biodiversity in our land and oceans since the commencement of the industrial age. I really hope our future reverses this trend and I see the technology age as a potentially restorative force.

Do you have a motto or mantra? “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” - Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

What is your number one sustainability tip or trick? Start the sustainability discussion around our individual and aggregated demand. We are great at externalizing blame for problems that we see in the world. I think it is always best to look at the inequalities of our own demand first and then to what others are doing or not doing. You have more control of the former.

The next would be: strive to measure. Objectivity and accurate measurement will be the greatest allies of any sustainability initiative. I can’t stand it when I see poorly-thought-out or justified initiatives executed in the name of sustainability. Actually, I even dislike the term ‘sustainability’, it does a great job of obscuring the numbers.