Peta
Mathias

Peta Mathias (MNZM) is a respected and prolific author, television personality and stage performer, as well as international gastronomic tour host.

Previous experience
Born and bred in Auckland, she trained as a registered nurse, spending five years working at Auckland Hospital. She then moved to Canada and worked as a counsellor at a drug and alcohol centre. After six years in Montreal and Vancouver, Peta moved to Paris and became a dishwasher... within a few years she had worked her way up to head chef! She then bought her own restaurant in Paris which she ran for four years. Peta knows how tough life can get in the food trade.

Television
She presented the prime television travel/food shows Taste New Zealand, Taste Takes Off and A Taste of Home for twelve years. Her segment on TVNZ’s 32-part traveling segment Taste NZ was honoured with an international award at the World Food Media Awards in Adelaide in 1997. The presentation of a silver ladle was for best segment in a food program. She was voted Supreme Award winner at the New Zealand Guild of Food Writers Culinary Quill Awards in 2003. The Supreme Award recognises the most outstanding entry of the fourteen category winners. Mavis Airey, President of the Guild said the judges found it difficult selecting an overall winner and it was Peta's passion for the craft of food communications that made the final decision.

Author
Fête Accomplie, her first book, is about life in Paris with recipes and the first of her nine award-winning gastronomic travel books written about Morocco, France, New Zealand, Ireland, India and Vietnam. Can We Help It If We're Fabulous? - a book about women, came out in August 2008. It was an instant bestseller, and is still being reprinted and has now been published in Great Britain, the USA, Canada and Germany. Then came A Matter of Taste - a book of photographs of women's accessories made of food taken by Italian photographer Fulvio Bonavia, with text by Peta. This was followed by Just In Time To Be Too Late - Why Men Are Like Buses (2009) and Culinary Adventures in Marrakech (2010). Beat Till Stiff - A Woman's Recipe for Living from came out in 2011. Hot Pink Spice Saga - an Indian Culinary Travelogue With Recipes was released in 2014 and was shortlisted for best food book on India in the world at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2014.

Peta's passion for food, travel and writing is the perfect mix, as she spends half the year hosting gastronomic tours in Marrakesh, the South of France, Italy, the Basque Country, Vietnam and India. Her memoir is coupled with the story of selling a house in Auckland and buying one in the South of France. The title is Never Put All Your Eggs In One Bastard.

In 2019, Peta released Eat Your Heart Out, a book about unusual love stories. You may be interested to hear about bird love, puppet love, heart eating, what to feed your lover, mythological love and destructive, flamboyant Indian love.

A sustainability icon, in 2021 Peta released a book called Shed Couture about fashion & clothing, with her main message being buy less but buy better and recycle.

Culinary Tours
Peta's passion for food, travel and writing is the perfect mix, as she spends half the year hosting gastronomic tours in Marrakesh, the South of France, Italy, the Basque Country, Portugal and India. She lives in her home in France teaching cooking classes in the French summer and her home in Auckland hosting her supper club in the NZ summer.

Awards
In 2012 Peta was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit by the New Zealand Government in recognition for her work as an author and TV presenter.

She is an in-demand MC and speaker who has audiences falling off their chairs with laughter after hearing her uncensored tales of her escapades and fabulous adventures. Peta talks about life's opportunities and how to 'be ready when the ball is kicked into your court and just run with it'. She is available to add a bit of musical flare to your evening too.

Peta is a delightfully entertaining, wickedly funny presenter with a zest for life you can almost taste! In her words, 'it ain't over till it's over'.