A Tavola!

Wal Foster

We recently spent the afternoon with Wal Foster of the BUSH ICE CREAMERY in Brunswick Heads — picking Ooray plums before returning to the kitchen to make parfait. It’s a simple sequence, but one that reveals the way he works: moving between landscape and process, ingredient and outcome, capturing fruit at its peak.

Shaped by years in fine dining kitchens and a childhood grounded in self-sufficiency, Wal’s practice is both intuitive and exacting — foraging native ingredients and either using them the same day or fermenting them over time, sometimes for years, before they reach the menu.

In the conversation that follows, Wal traces the path that led him here — and how ice cream became his way of working.

Photography & interview by LAYLA CLUER

I grew up on 100 acres of bushland… Mum and Dad set it up to be completely self-sufficient.

LC: You grew up a few hours south of here in Pillar Valley. What do you remember most about that landscape, and how did it shape your early relationship to food?
WF: I remember Pillar Valley as incredibly beautiful bushland — the last mountain range before about 15 kilometres of flatlands leading to the coastal town of Minnie Waters. Pillar, as we called it, was a tight little community full of lovely people.

I grew up on 100 acres of bushland with a small cleared area where we grew food and had our house. Mum and Dad set it up to be completely self-sufficient. A spring-fed stream ran through the property from the neighbouring mountain range, which we pumped for drinking water when needed.

We were completely off-grid — a fuel stove for cooking and heating water, lots of wood chopping, and an old generator feeding forklift batteries alongside solar power. My parents were big hippies and loved the bush.

Pillar was about 45 minutes from town, so we didn’t go often, but somehow every night at dinner I’d be excited because Mum cooked something amazing — always really nutritious, with lots of vegetables and salads.

I wasn’t allowed any sugar or preservatives until I turned four. Mum’s favourite story is asking what I wanted for my fourth birthday dinner — I was finally allowed to try anthony but asked for lentil pie haha

Somehow every night at dinner I’d be excited because Mum cooked something amazing — always really nutritious.

LC: It sounds like food was always a big part of home life for you. When did it shift from something comforting and everyday into something you wanted to pursue more seriously — as a craft or a career?
WF: Mum’s food was always exciting and healthy, so I really owe my love of food to her.

For a while she dated a French guy and picked up some great tricks from him — things like making a roux, smashing garlic to release the flavour faster, pepper sauce for steak, and lots of little techniques like that.

The first thing I ever cooked was with Mum — we made baklava. I’m still a complete fiend for it today. Whenever I see it I have to buy it.

I can still remember her recipe: layers of filo pastry lathered with butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, honey and almonds. It completely blew my mind and I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of eating it.

LC: You mentioned training in Sydney’s fine-dining scene, which must have felt like quite a shift from Pillar Valley. What were those early years in hospitality like for you?
WF: I spent a year cutting my teeth working 80-hour weeks at a busy café in Balmain — starting as the kitchen hand on sandwich assembly and leaving as the head chef.

After that I landed at Aria, where I got my first real taste of fine dining in a fast-paced, competitive kitchen. We were doing 250+ covers across lunch and dinner with around 25 chefs in the kitchen. That was where I really started to look at food differently and build my confidence.
LC: Were there any restaurants or chefs that really shaped your thinking during that time — places that made you look at food in a new way?
WF: I remember eating at Universal, run by Christine Mansfield, and it completely blew my mind — huge flavours, really spicy food, and these cutting-edge desserts. The whole place had incredible energy.

But my most nostalgic food memory from those years is actually Golden Century at 3pm after a 16-hour shift at Aria. A group of us would roll in exhausted and fill a lazy Susan with fried rice, XO pippies, duck two ways, congee with century egg and pork, Chinese doughnuts, and steamed coral trout with ginger and shallots. To this day, XO pippies with fried vermicelli noodles is still one of my favourite dishes.

LC: From there you eventually found yourself in Sweden — which feels like quite a leap geographically and culturally. How did the culture of kitchens and hospitality differ there, and were there any techniques that you really developed during that time?
WF: I was really lucky to get the opportunity to buy a small restaurant in Sweden with chef Robbin Andersson and sommelier Linda Toffelt. None of us had any money, but we took a risk and bought a place called Drängen, which translates to farmhand.

After six months we were awarded best restaurant in the city, and after eight months we’d completely paid off our loans. It was a dream run.

The four of us — Rob, Linda, Kajsa (our only employee) and myself — were like a family. Every day at 4pm we’d sit down together for a proper meal before service started at five.

Because of the climate we did loads of pickling, fermentation and foraging. Rob and I also swapped sections every day — one night running mains, the next doing entrées and desserts. It kept things fresh and pushed us to learn every part of the kitchen.

That’s really where my love of desserts and ice cream began. Having the chance to make them regularly was when I started to get completely hooked.

LC: You mentioned the other day that fruit in Sweden often lacked fragrance, and that returning home reignited your excitement for Australian produce. What was that shift like? Is there a particular olfactory memory that has stayed with you from that homecoming?
NS: The first time I came home after three years in Sweden was pretty overwhelming. The long winters were tough — the lack of sun really affects you — and there’s very little fresh produce growing locally during that time. Most of the fruit and vegetables were imported from Spain or Germany, and often tasted pretty lifeless.

I remember landing back in Australia and smelling a pineapple from about twenty metres away. I literally got goosebumps. I was so excited — like a kid again — maybe my body was lacking vitamins or something. Anyway, I immediately bought pineapples, mangoes, peaches and cherries and went home to make a mango smoothie, the taste of which nearly made me cry.

That said, Sweden has some beautiful produce too. Wild blueberries grow across huge parts of the country and have incredible flavour, and there are amazing berries like lingonberry, cloudberry and sea buckthorn. But my favourite are smultron — tiny wild strawberries that taste almost like perfume.

That idea of trapping flavour at its best and serving it months later was really exciting to me.

LC:And somewhere in that period — between Sweden and returning home — your fascination with ice cream really began to take shape.
WF: Definitely durning my Drängen days in Sweden. Rob and I developed the menus together and we used a Pacojet, which is similar to the machine I use now — the Frxsh is just a newer, more refined version.

What fascinated me was how ice cream allowed me to capture the flavour of an ingredient at its peak. In Sweden especially, it became a kind of preservation. You could take something at the height of its flavour and nutrition, freeze it, and then churn it whenever you needed it.

That idea of trapping flavour at its best and serving it months later was really exciting to me.

LC: You mentioned caring for your mother during her illness. Did that experience change the way you think about nourishment, cooking and comfort?
WF: One hundred percent. The best decision I ever made was quitting work to care for Mum.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer and initially given two weeks to live, but she ended up living for fourteen months, which gave us some really special time together.

During that period my sister had her first baby and was running an organic market garden next door. We ate three meals a day straight from that garden — things like handmade soba noodles with bone broth, local miso, ramen eggs from my sister’s chickens, and herbs and vegetables literally just pulled from the ground. It was probably the healthiest I’ve ever been, and it gave me time to slow down after years of long kitchen hours.

I cut most sugars out of Mum’s diet, but she still craved sweet things. So I started making yoghurt sweetened with honey and eventually began experimenting with ice cream using a second-hand Pacojet.

The first flavour I made was lemon myrtle and honey, cultured with probiotics so Mum could digest it easily. I served it at my sister’s baby’s naming ceremony in the bush, and not long after that I started selling it at the Nymboida markets out of an esky. The community really loved it.

LC:That approach to sweetness — where flavour and nourishment take priority over sugar — seems to carry through into the way you make your ice cream today. Could you tell me a little about the technical side of your process, and what distinguishes your ice cream from traditional gelato?
WF: I can use far less sugar than traditional gelato because I churn my ice cream à la minute, about eight portions at a time.

The base is frozen hard at around minus twenty degrees, then churned to order and served within about twenty minutes. Because of that, I don’t need the extra sugar that’s usually added for stability. It means I can focus more on the flavour of the ingredients rather than the sweetness, and the end result feels lighter — it’s much easier to digest.

These foods are some of the oldest on the planet, and I find it incredibly exciting to play a small part in rediscovering them.

LC:Alongside the cultivated ingredients you work with, you also have a deep interest in native foods and foraging. How did that part of your practice begin?
WF: I approach them almost like exotic ingredients that very few people have experienced.

For me, the goal is never to manipulate them so much that you lose their flavour. These foods are some of the oldest on the planet, and I find it incredibly exciting to play a small part in rediscovering them.

I often think about what Australia’s culinary landscape might have looked like before colonisation and large-scale land clearing. It’s hard to imagine the diversity that once existed.
LC: You’re also known for personally picking the fruit that goes into your ice cream. Why is that direct relationship to more cultivated ingredients important to you?
WF: Serving fruit just a few hours after picking it is the best offering I can make as a chef. There’s a flavour and texture to freshly picked ingredients — like they’re still buzzing with energy. Your body recognises it. Like crunching into lettuce or herbs straight from the garden — you just can’t replicate that.

LC: What are you feeling most excited about right now — food culture, new ingredients, the ice cream industry, or life more broadly?
WF: I’m really excited about an upcoming month of travel with my partner Rhi through Thailand, South Korea and Japan. We’re planning to do plenty of research — cooking schools, exploring markets — but mainly a lot of eating. I always come back from those trips feeling incredibly inspired. It’s been too long since I’ve travelled like that, and I’m looking forward to bringing that energy back into my cooking.
LC: That’s right — hope there’s lots of ice ream eating up in Hokido!

Lastly, I always like to ask what's for dinner tonight?
WF: I’m celebrating my birthday at Bayside Yakiniku in Byron — a great Japanese BBQ spot where they bring you a hibachi and loads of sliced Wagyu with different condiments.

But what I’m most excited about is their Japanese pickle plate. One of the chefs does it in the style of nukazuke — whole vegetables fermented in rice bran. It’s incredibly delicious.