Peta Mathias

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Peta Christine Mathias MNZM is a New Zealand food writer and television presenter who runs a company making food and travel shows. She also leads gastronomic tours in the south of France, Morocco, Spain, and India.

She was born in Auckland and initially trained as a nurse, working at Auckland Hospital for five years. She then moved to Canada, living for six years in Montreal and Vancouver as a toxicotherapist in drug and alcohol treatment centres. Later she moved to London and Paris, worked in restaurants starting as a dishwasher and then as a chef, and eventually bought and ran a restaurant called Rose Blues for four years.

In 1990 she returned to New Zealand and began a career in food writing and broadcasting. In 2006 she started a company to organise culinary tours, and in 2008 she founded Red Head Media to make food and travel TV shows based on her travels.

Awards and honours include: in 1997, Best Segment in a Food Program at the World Food Media Awards for Taste NZ; in 2003, the Supreme Award at the New Zealand Guild of Food Writers Culinary Quill Awards. In the 2012 Queen’s Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as an author and television presenter. Her book Burnt Barley won Best Literary Food Writing (in English) at the World Cookbook Fair, which was released with a four-track CD of the same name on which Mathias sings Irish country songs. In 2014, Hot Pink Spice Saga, co-written with Julie Le Clerc, was shortlisted in the Best in the World for Indian Cookery category at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.