The scent of sumac-flavoured chicken, fried almonds and garlicky shakshuka beckons, tantalising the hungry towards Nayran Tabiei's cosy cafe at a quiet end of Chapel Street in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Flavours of Syria is a few minutes walk from the main strip of Carlisle Street's op shops, supermarkets and cafes, St Kilda Primary School and the St Kilda Post Depot. This means there's not much to attract foot traffic to this area of Chapel Street, and so Tabiei's cafe has remained, largely, a local treasure and word-of-mouth attraction.
Tabiei is an asylum seeker from Syria's capital of Damascus who escaped the Syrian war in 2011 after her home and coffee shop were bombed. She and her husband along with their then 4-year-old daughter travelled to Lebanon, then to Dubai, Thailand and Indonesia, before finally arriving in Australia. Her three sons, now 15, 20 and 23, stayed with their grandparents in Iran.
After a year on Christmas Island, she made Melbourne her home. The year was 2012. Since then, she has built an epicurean ode to the land she was born in, and the food that her grandmother taught her to respect, love, prepare and share.
"The Syrian food [is what] I learned from my grandma and my neighbours in the neighbourhood in Damascus that I lived in," Tabiei says. "My mum passed away when I was six, and I'd go to my grandma's at the end of the week. My grandmother taught me sweets, and from that day, I understand butter. We made dough from six or seven years old.
"Now, when I do cooking classes, I tell people, 'feel the dough, put it in your hand and feel it in your heart. Enjoy it'."
Before opening her cafe, she ran cooking classes through the training centre, the Australian College Of Trade (ACOT), and provided catering services. She still runs classes through the social enterprise . However, her colourful cafe, Flavours Of Syria, enables her to provide a true sense of the hospitality, intimacy and immediacy of food made and delivered from one person to another.
Nayran Tabiei's cooking is inspired by her family. Source: Nayran Tabiei
It was a dream from the day I came here to set Flavours Of Syria up. The community is very supportive.
At the solid-wood tables, surrounded by murals on the walls, breakfast and lunchtime diners feast on garlicky foul (chickpea, broad bean, tahini, yoghurt, tomato, parsley and spring onion), shakshuka (eggs in a spicy tomato sauce with onion and capsicum) and grilled sujuk (homemade Syrian sausage) with cheese. They also eat falafel wrap, fatayer (a handmade pie encasing haloumi, spinach and sumac) and mesakhan (a pastry wrapped chicken, sumac and onion filling). To skip the hummus and baba ganoush (barbecued eggplant, tahini, olive oil and garlic) would be a food crime.
EGGPLANT DIP
Baba ganoush could make a shoe taste good
Tabiei was taught by her grandmother that breakfasts are of prime importance.
"We wake up in the morning and we have our coffee. Our breakfast is full of goodness," Tabiei says.
"For breakfast, we have makdous, stuffed eggplant with walnut, capsicum and garlic; we have labne; hummus with chopped tomato, cumin, tahini and yoghurt on top; baba ganoush with tahini on top; we have ka'ak, long vanilla biscuits we dip in tea and eat it; scrambled or boiled eggs. It's a big meal, in the morning."
However, other daily meals also deserve a mention. "Lunch is rice or stew, afternoon is coffee with nibbly biscuits, then we have dinner. Nuts are very important, we always have nuts on the table – cashew, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, pistachio, salted."
The cafe is located down a rainbow-painted laneway behind Space2b Social Design, a community-based organisation that provides a safe place for newly arrived migrants and refugees to seek work experience and business skills, and has supported her own venture.
"It was a dream from the day I came here to set Flavours Of Syria up. The community is very supportive," says Tabiei.
Her rental agreement with Space2b ends in December this year. She hopes it will be renewed for a few more years since the community have embraced her and her food so wholeheartedly.
FOOD FROM SYRIA
Syrian rice pudding with jelly (balouza)
