Suburban Spice Route

The history of Middle Eastern food in this country is a history of people, movement and spices smuggled in suitcases.

- Alecia Simmonds

When Ibrahim Kasif’s grandparents arrived in Sydney from Cyprus in the 1950s, they had to buy their olive oil from pharmacies. Anglo-Saxons didn’t then see much use for it beyond treating ear ailments. “There was simply nowhere else that sold it.” Joseph Abboud’s parents shared similar stories. Once, they told him, family friends had the police arrive unexpectedly when they tried to bake pita in a wood-fired oven in the backyard. Sirens wailed as za’atar-dusted bread spiced the air.

Passed down between generations of Middle Eastern migrants, these stories of culinary deprivation lend a heroic quality to the recipes that survived. They speak of a time when taste could be treasonous and, for chefs like Kasif and Abboud who run three of the most innovative Middle Eastern restaurants in Australia today (Kasif with Stanbuli and Abboud with Rumi and Bar Saracen), they remind them of their debts. “We have the luxury of saying, ‘oh, you’re stuck in your ways’ to our parents,” muses Abboud. “That’s because they did the hard yards. They’re not stuck in the mould, in fact they broke the mould.”

The story of how Australian palates came to delight in braised lamb or the sweet scent of orange blossom is quite brief. “If you look at the Australian food scene, the history of Middle Eastern cuisine is only 50 or 60 years old,” explains Kasif, “yet words like falafel, tahini or shish are all part of the vocabulary now.”

Kasif’s choice of dishes is telling: although the Middle East encompasses many nations, its flavours mostly came to Australia with Turkish and Lebanese migrants. And before Anglo Australians could enjoy their food, the government needed to shift from a policy of assimilation to multiculturalism. Australia needed to be liberated from the tyranny of shepherd’s pie.