On food and passion to create

Minoli De Silva

Minoli De Silva is a 40-year-old Sri Lankan-born Australian and a former chemical engineer. Five years ago, she left her engineering profession to dedicate herself to her childhood passion: food. The creation of food, mainly Sri Lankan cuisine, fascinated her. In 2021 and 2022, she took a leap of faith by competing in MasterChef Australia, presenting Sri Lankan food, and thereafter opening a now highly successful Sri Lankan restaurant in Darwin, Australia, named “Ella”. The restaurant is named after the Uva Province town of Ella in Sri Lanka, and she has since developed a culinary fusion of Sri Lankan food with both Sri Lankan and Australian spices, earning ‘Ella’ a place in the Australian Good Food Guide.

De Silva was in Sri Lanka last month at the invitation of the Dilmah Tea Company as part of a documentary series promoting Sri Lanka that Dilmah has embarked upon.

At the end of her visit to Sri Lanka, during which she travelled across the island as part of the documentary production, including to Kandy, Jaffna and, of course, Ella, experiencing the food of each locale, she spoke to a small group of Sri Lankans in a unique interaction arranged by Dilmah.

“Stories, flavour, resilience and reinvention” was the theme of what Dilmah described as an ‘intimate salon conversation’ held at the t-Lounge and Bar by Dilmah at The Shoppes at City of Dreams in Colombo.

As De Silva began speaking in an open, clear and joyous manner about her life, and especially the bold step of leaving an engineering career to cook, what emerged between the lines and through her carefree manner of speaking was a quiet wisdom.

“It is what you put into the world that is returned to you. Ultimately, one has to be happy. One has to be at peace with oneself in doing what the heart calls. This is what I chose to do after more than a decade of functioning very successfully as an engineer in Australia,” she stated.

The questions fielded to her were many.

Fellow Sri Lankans, the majority of whom had never been to Australia, wanted to know many things, one of which was how her Sri Lankan parents, originally from Gampola in Kandy, reacted to her decision to leave her engineering career to cook.

“My mother knew I loved to cook. I used to copy her cooking and failed many times to get the taste of the curry right. But once I took the decision, it was respected as what I wanted,” she replied.

De Silva finished in 10th place in Season 13 of MasterChef Australia in 2021 and in 18th place in Season 14 in 2022. Although she did not win, she became one of the most popular contestants and, as a result, an ambassador for Sri Lankan food.

The documentary she participated in for Dilmah, aimed at promoting Sri Lanka and its cuisine, will be showcased to the public at a later date. What is already clear, however, is that De Silva is among the strongest promoters of her birth country in Australia. She left Sri Lanka with her parents at the age of six, and although she grew up in an English-speaking country, her connection to her parents’ language, Sinhala, remains strong.

“I speak Sinhala at home. I can speak it now,” she quipped.

Listening to her anecdotes, from her food-obsessed childhood self sneaking money from her mother’s purse to buy a hot dog, to her audacity in competing on MasterChef Australia without any previous professional culinary experience, was a testament to how human beings are united by the common threads of passion, hope and the desire to create something beyond routine or fear.

“How many of you are doing something you really, really love?” she asked her small audience, which consisted of a few writers and mostly young entrepreneurs and culinary enthusiasts.

My hand shot up and she grinned at me.

Later, during a brief private discussion, I asked her about something I sensed as she spoke: a deeper inner awareness and connection with the universe that she seemed to possess.

I referred to one of her comments in which she stated that “it is what you put out into the world that you get back”.

There was also a thread in her thinking that emphasised the importance of forgiving oneself and becoming one’s own best friend by offering oneself love through trust.

“I spend a lot of time alone contemplating various things. I believe that one has to connect first with oneself, to truly understand what one wants to give to the world. I first chose engineering, but it was not my passion. It was something I pursued, but it was not something I would sacrifice everything for. I left it when I did because it felt like the right time. The COVID-19 lockdown was the decisive period, because I had time to cook, and then the change occurred just like that,” she shared.

In the adjoining article on this page are some reflections on youth, examination stress, and the importance of choosing what brings happiness and peace. De Silva is a powerful example, for both young people and parents in Sri Lanka, of choosing joy over fear and constraint when deciding on a career path. If more Sri Lankans could make a choice like De Silva’s and venture into the global arena with confidence and faith, pursuing paths off the beaten track, the country would undoubtedly create more of the happiness it so greatly needs.