Bread Of Life

Baking 400 loaves of flatbread a week is more than a labour of love for Lebanese matriarch Salwa Moubarak. It’s a meditation that connects her to her homeland and family.

- Katrina Meynink

If you want to find Salwa Moubarak, look for her in the kitchen. Never mind that she’s nearly 70 – she’ll be there, hands and elbows dusted in flour, kneading the 400 or so discs of flatbread needed each week at Gerard’s Bistro, her son’s Brisbane restaurant. This is the food of her mother and her mother before her; every time she heats the saj, every time she takes the rolling pin in hand, her connection with Lebanon, with home and family, her children and her parents, is renewed.

Gerard’s is a restaurant in Fortitude Valley celebrated for its modern takes on Middle Eastern food. Moubarak works with chef Ben Williamson to make khobz marquq – the bread that is an essential accompaniment to his Lebanese, Turkish and North African flavours. You’ll find it served on the side of a lamb tartare with harissa, perhaps, or folded into a bowl alongside slow-cooked wagyu brisket with labne, eggplant and pickles.

Moubarak grew up in a small village in the Bekaa Valley called Deir El Ahmar and moved to Melbourne in 1972, finding work in the Sheridan factory sewing quilts, pillowcases and sheets. In 1983, chasing warmer weather, she moved to Brisbane, buying and selling fruit shops while raising her four children.

Moubarak first learnt how to make her golden, chewy flatbread at her mother’s side. She was one of a dozen children, number six in a large boisterous family of eight boys and four girls. She cooked out of necessity, helping her mother care for her paraplegic brother and blind grandmother. There were no recipes, just an understanding of what felt right and tasted delicious.