Raph Rashid and I last spoke in 2020 when he was making Mean Cuisine and finding clever ways to keep people entertained at home. This time, he’s in the middle of something just as playful, but much more public: The Greatest of the Mall, a winter school holiday project with Melbourne Food & Wine Festival that sends him into shopping centres across Melbourne to create free, centre-inspired doughnuts. There was a milk tea brûlée doughnut at The Glen, pink lamingtons in Frankston, baklava cheesecake at Broadmeadows and matcha yuzu at Box Hill. But the real joy of this conversation is hearing how Raph thinks about shopping centres, food courts, local flavour and those small, sweet moments with family and friends that become much bigger memories than you expect.
Conversation with a chef: Hi, Raph, it’s lovely to see you again, although I was just saying off mic, perhaps I spoke to you on the phone last time because it was 2020.
Raph Rashid: Yeah, I feel like the, that was the phone error, the Zoom era.
We chatted then about Mean Cuisine. You were doing some really innovative things then, keeping us all entertained at home. And it sounds like you’re in the middle of something super innovative as well. The Greatest of the Mall. I have to be careful how I say that. You have got to space it out, don’t you?
Otherwise, it’s greatest of them all. I guess it rolls off the tongue pretty good, but we didn’t really call our shopping centres malls. It’s quite an American adaption. This is the third year of The Greatest of the Mall. Every year is four or five centres. It’s a bit of fun in the winter holidays.
There’s a lot going on with it. You’ve got different shopping centres, and different flavours of doughnut, and different collaborators.
I like to make it as hard for myself as I possibly can. Each centre, I reach out to someone that I know knows the centre and we’ll just go and hang out at the centre, basically: walk the food courts, have a look around, just feel what the centre’s all about. Every year I meet someone new there, we just go through what’s happening at each, each particular centre is quite different. There are just unlimited flavours. Then I just try to navigate that into something that I think will resonate with my guest and then the people who come down on the on the day.
Is it a weekend thing?
Well, tomorrow we’re in Frankston: Friday and Saturday in Frankston. Last weekend was the Glen Shopping Centre. The Glen Shopping Centre has the best fresh produce. The Asian grocer there, you cannot find a better grocer. It’s actually overwhelming how much stuff they have there. I went in there last week and I got paralysis. I was like, what do I need? Then I just picked up a lemongrass and some ginger. Then the next day I was like, okay, can you just buy like some stuff that you need? Then I go looking and find some obscure fish powder that I can put on something. They’ve just got everything. Yeah, that’s right. Then next weekend is Broadmeadows Central on Thursday and Friday and Box Hill Central on Saturday, Sunday.
Oh my goodness. You do like a challenge. So last weekend at the Glen, what was the doughnut there?
We made a milk tea custard and then we brûléed that: a doughnut with a really strong milk tea. Black tea infused into some milk, made a custard, and then piped that in. Then put sugar all over the top and made a really nice brûlée. That was in the centre, so everyone could just get that nice crack. That came about becauseI think there are 20 tea shops at the Glen. There’s like all these levels of specialty tea. The kids are drinking boba tea. There’s a cafe there called D1, which is a Hong Kong style breakfast place. They have a half coffee, half tea drink and a pineapple bun there as well. I met Alice there who has a business, @misstrixiedrinkstea. I got to show her around. I had some tea and then I was like, this would be great if we could explore this doughnut: making sure that it’s interesting but not going so obscure that a kid doesn’t like it. Because 1200 doughnuts. That’s a lot of doughnuts. So I tried to have something that’s good for all age groups. There’s a lovely photo that someone sent me last week, which was a kid with his mum and his grandparents. They were just sitting there and they all had one doughnut and they’d spun the wheel because we’d give away a lot of in-store vouchers. There’s lots of things you can go and do around the centre. You spin the wheel; you’ll win a prize of some value. It’s fun. And then you get a doughnut and can sit down, have a moment.
Are you giving away the doughnuts.
Yeah, all the doughnuts are free.
Did you say 1200?
Yeah, 1200: 600 a day. And we make them all by hand.
How long does it take to make that number of doughnuts by hand?
For tomorrow’s doughnuts, the dough is already resting. It’s probably on its second proof right now. That then gets knocked back, goes into the fridge. That will come out at about 3am. There’s three of us in the doughnut kitchen. They’ll pop it out of the fridge, then we cut them all by hand. We’re just such a small little doughnut shop, we still do everything by hand. We cut them all behind and then we’ll prove those up. They get fried off. So probably to be in Frankston by 10, we will leave here by 8.30. So, doughnut production will probably start around 2.30. It takes a while.
Because then you’ve got all the glazing. What’s the flavour?
Tomorrow is the Pink Lamington, plus jam, which is controversial. And then I’m going to finish it with some spray cream.
What’s controversial about jam?
Well, some people don’t like jam in their Lamingtons: strawberry icing and some raspberry jam and then coconut and cream. I grew up in Frankston. That was my shopping centre. I had to go through there to go to school. Every afternoon that’s where you’re hanging out, riding a skateboard through there. The Frankston Centre Bayside really is the hub of the whole town.
We just drove through there the other day. I feel like there’s a lot going on in Frankston now, and that huge hospital, I bet there’d be a lot of people coming out of that for some doughnuts.
It’s a colourful place. It’s changed. It’s near the sea. You have to go through there to get the peninsula. It’s a great place to stop. I’ve always had a connection there. My mum still lives in the area.
Who did you work with on that one?
That was Dani Venn (@danivenn). Dani lives in Frankston, actually. It was a no brainer. I was like, okay, show me where we’re going. She loves her lollies, so we went to the lolly shop. She’s got kids. She knows what it’s all about. She’s a great cook.
And then next week?
Next week, we go to Box Hill Central on Saturday and Sunday. So on the Thursday, Friday, we go to Broadmeadows. I’m meeting up with a friend called Dub (@dub.eats.everything). He’s notoriously making videos where you can go to a strip or a little suburb and you can spend $20 for lunch and you can have a whole bunch of different stuff. He’s got a great audience, and I met him out there because I think he’s pretty local as well. We went through the centre and there’s some nut shops at Broadmeadow Central. Sometimes you don’t think about fresh produce at shopping centres. But at Broadmeadows, there’s an amazing grocer, especially for Middle Eastern food. I think there’s four different origins of pistachios just there. In this one shop, there’s Turkish, there’s Iranian, there’s American and potentially they have some Australian as well. You can almost do a pistachio flight here. There’s always lots of baklava out there. What are flavours that people like in this area? I love baklava as well. So I said, let’s get that into a doughnut.
How do you get that into a doughnut?
It’s filled with a cheesecake and then on the top, I made a nut mix, made a paste as well: orange and rose paste, not quite the syrup, but just something to put all the nuts onto. Then I made some some filo. So I’ll dress that when I get out there. I’ll give it another hit of like syrup on top. It’s baklava-esque. The funny thing is, I actually did this one last year in Roxborough Park. We did a tiny little activation out there. I’ve had two people all year asking, when’s that doughnut coming back? That’s really sweet: when you when you serve something to someone and then it’s in their mind that they really want to follow it up to see when they can have that experience again.
It’s interesting I spoke about that with a chef at the weekend down in Queenscliff, and he was saying about how, in any kind of art form, it’s there and it’s lasting, you can admire it except for food, where the pleasure is in the destroying of it because that’s when you enjoy it. But then we talked about how the ephemeral nature of those things means that it can be really lasting for some people, that food memory can, they’ve always got that. They think about that doughnut they had and all of those flavours that reminded them of family or things they love. That can stay with people forever.
I think that’s the most powerful thing, especially when we think about foods that are of a comforting nature. More memorable to me as a kid were the trips to the fish and chip shop on a Friday night for however many years that was, than one very expensive meal. That psychology I carry with me and I try to make these experiences at the mall or at my food truck or wherever you go memorable. When I see parents with their kids or their grandparents, that’s a really special time. So, if you can have this doughnut, which gives you pleasure and you have the people around you that you love, and you can walk around this shopping centre and have a look around: great. It’s a good recipe for, relaxing and also finding comfort and enjoying the people you’re with.
Each centre, I reach out to someone that I know knows the centre and we’ll just go and hang out at the centre, basically: walk the food courts, have a look around, just feel what the centre’s all about. Every year I meet someone new there, we just go through what’s happening at each, each particular centre is quite different. There are just unlimited flavours. Then I just try to navigate that into something that I think will resonate with my guest and then the people who come down on the on the day.
Raph Rashid, All Day Doughnuts
And then to round it out, Box Hill, I imagine there’s a lot of flavours going on in Box Hill.
Box Hill is the most elite food court of all time. It’s crazy. I always start at the, um, I always start at rainbow chicken. There’s a place there called Rainbow Chicken. I always get the cumin lamb skewers there. And then generally I get the beef tendon as well. They grill it over charcoal, and they’re firing away. Sometimes there’s a sweet potato as well that they bake there. It is never ending that place. I was with a friend, Aileen (@melbfoodieee), and she loves the sweets. You know the jiggly air pancakes. I am intimidated by those. So it was great to get around with a young Gen Z person pulling me up all the time. That’s my favourite pastime. I always said that if I wasn’t embarrassing my kids, I wasn’t doing my job. So I feel like I’m doing my job by embarrassing Aileen, so that’s good. We got some pancakes together, I think we’ve got some mochis. She loves matcha. I’m down with matcha, but I really like it balanced with something quite tangy. So, I’ve made this matcha yuzu doughnut. The two colours also really pop and then that with the doughnut is awesome. But yeah, Box Hill is unreal. Like, especially the way, I really like the way that the train and the buses converge there. It’s part of the train station and then it’s kind of like an organised mayhem.
It’s really a city in itself. You can see it against the horizon as well and you think, what’s that: Box Hill.
Yeah. I really love that. The centre is cool as well, just being in there. It’s a real comfortable area.
I was thinking about the whole mall slash shopping centre situation and the fact that you’ve got such a cult following so who was this for? Is it more for foodie Instagrammers, but it sounds like talking to you, it really is about the community themselves.
It’s for the people who come down every week. I feel like I do it with them, you know, because if no one likes a doughnut, then I haven’t really explored enough. I’m so happy. Last week, the doughnut just went crazy. I know they’re free, but we’re still discerning about what we eat, right? It’s yum and it’s for everyone. That’s always been how I’ve approached all of this since before we even had Instagram. I was like, this burger’s for anyone who wants to come down: it’s not for this particular niche or anything.
It sounds like it’s a fun thing to be part of. I think people love being part of something as well.
Oh, totally. Line up, have a chat to your whoever you’re rolling with for the day. Spin the wheel, have a bit of fun.
Tell me about the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival involvement on this project.
Three and a half years ago they came to me, and I’ve always worked with them on festival to some degree. They had this idea. Melbourne Food and Wine really is the authority on food in Melbourne, or one of. I feel like the connection between the centres and them…the centre’s food’s already legitimised, as far as I’m concerned, especially with places like Rainbow Chicken, but when you bring in Melbourne food and Wine and then bring in another lens, like mine or my guests, then it really just hopefully just broadens the spectrum of people who might come who might remember, hey Raph went there and he did this and now let’s go. It’s good to have the Melbourne Food and Wine helping to champion the whole project. These days a lot of things are pay to play. A lot of the information that we get has been paid for, whether it’s an influencer or whether it’s word of mouth, so we do need to be discerning about where we go and how we spend our time. For me, the mall is a really easy place to go with your friends and family and check it out.
I think these moments of happiness, of delicious doughnuts and being out amongst the people and a fun time, we need that at the moment.
We really do. Everything’s expensive. If we can just have a moment where we’re not thinking too much about that, have a nice sweet treat during the day, sit down with your friends and family and enjoy yourself. That’s good.
That’s it.
Yeah, that’s it. It’s not much deeper than that. But on the flavours, hopefully there’s something there that you will enjoy that speaks to the area and the people.
Raph Rashid, The Greatest of the Mall