Raph Rashid

Hi Raph, it’s really lovely to talk with you over the phone, although I always prefer to talk in person. Although this is funny for me because you don’t know what I look like but I have been watching all of your Mean Cuisine episodes so I feel like I know you really well but I actually don’t know you at all.

Well that’s good…and that’s good.

First of all, thank you for Mean Cuisine, such an awesome idea and such joy in  this time for people in Melbourne but for anyone really watching it.

Ah, cool.

How did you come up with that idea?

Well, I like my kitchen and I like being in there and I like that it’s a bit kind of hopeless; the stove barely works sometimes. It’s something that is dear to me and I just wanted to share that with other people really. My idea is that you don’t need much to make a good meal. I think sometimes we get caught up in having something sous-vide at home or we are buying gadgets we might use once a year and bits and pieces like that. I just wanted to bring it back to what I like to cook and do that with some of my friends. So yeah, it’s pretty basic, it’s just let’s do this.

That was the premise for where we filmed it, but the other part was that there were all these dishes I grew up with in the eighties and none of them really appear anymore. I started thinking about that and I wondered why those dishes got thrown on the junk heap. What was it about them? And if I go back and have a look at them now, are they still delicious and how do I interpret them? I guess I started thinking about that more and the way we churn though fashion and I thought it would be an interesting thing for me to have a look at in my style.

How did you decide on the dishes you cook, because you’ve got chow mein, and apricot chicken…they’re classics.

I used to collect all The Womens’ Weekly cookbooks, I just thought they were unreal. I guess they were all just around, but I really just went back to what my parents were making for me and versions of those. I talk about it in the curried sausages episode…I was, like, what? All I wanted was a sausage in bread and we grew up in a house where there was predominantly curry and rice every night and my dad couldn’t even make regular sausages, he had to curry them. It wasn’t great. I picked up from where my parents left it, in a way.

I also have your book, Hungry for That, and I have had that for a few years; someone gave it to me as a gift right after it came out. I’m sorry to say I haven’t made anything in it, but it’s such an amazing book for the stories you tell and your connection with food…and that’s where I’m going with this…it feels like you’ve always had a really string connection to family, food, fun.

Family, food, fun…triple F…that’s good.

And I’m really intrigued how you’ve made that work as a living. Your dad had a couple of goes at restaurants…

That’s right. In a certain way, it killed my family. It was so demanding having one person in a restaurant. You almost need to have your whole family involved or it can tear the time apart. In family, it was always dad who was off at the restaurant and the hours can be so gruelling, that it puts a wedge in there and then there are the finances. So I guess for quite a few years, I was hesitant to get into it, even though I was cooking all the time and then it just started to pull at me. When it came time to set up my food business, I went for a model that I could really control, which is one of the reasons I started a food truck. I had a small family and I didn’t want to be in a restaurant all day, I wanted to be with them. This was the easiest way for me to do what I wanted to do and start pursuing my ideas professionally in the kitchen but it meant that I only had to open up one or two days a week. It gave a balance.

Even so, that would have been a challenge. Number one, it’s Melbourne, food capital, but also as you say there are lots of things to consider and people, and perhaps particularly in Melbourne, people really follow fashion. You have really lasted the distance and now you have quite an empire, which I just find so impressive. You introduced food trucks when there weren’t really food trucks, so that takes a lot of bravery.

Thank you. You make it sound so good and I really appreciate that, but I don’t know, those steps were really natural to me. It was a steep learning curve in a lot of ways, but I thought to myself, are we doing this and I was like, yeah we’re doing this. 

So you didn’t think, I’m going to be a pioneer and my name will be engraved in the foundations of Melbourne…?

None of that. I honestly didn’t even know what social media was and all of a sudden, people said, use this to promote it. I just thought the food would talk for itself and in a lot of ways it did. But Facebook helped it along and certain bits of timing helped out. It was a great time and it still is a great time. There have been a lot of changes and the industry hurts but there are still ways and I still hear of people doing amazing pop-ups at the moment. Popele are still innovating and that’s impressive.

I did really like the very cinematic description of when you went to the first music festival with your newly fit-out food truck and the side of it opened as you drove home and all your takings were down the road. I think there is actually a film in that because the whole description was so brilliant.

Oh man…I told that story to the staff at the last Christmas party because I hadn’t spoken about it in years and they just looked at me and thought, oh man, have we chosen the wrong person to roll with? I had to promise them that I’d keep all the takings locked up. It was crazy that time. But I think the fact that I never stressed out about that, made me think, cool, maybe this is my thing.

Yeah, so I guess there’s a level of DIY, let’s give this a go…but obviously you have a sound base for it. Obviously you grew up in a family with restaurants and you seem to have a real passion for food, but how do you know what to do…are you self-taught?

My dad was a cook and also an artist. He worked on his craft and believed that whatever style you put forward, that’s your style. You can take on influences, but if you’ve got a voice and you are willing to voice it, at some point that will gravitate with someone and if you’re happy with who it gravitates with, then great, just keep running with that. I think the most important thing is to have a voice in whatever you do.

Well you have really stayed true to…and when I say simple, I don’t mean that in any kind of condescending way, your food is simple, but to achieve good simple, you do need to know what flavours go together. In Hungry for That, you’re doing tacos, burgers, sausages, fish…salads…there’s a real range of stuff in there. Where are you finding out about that? Is it from your travels…from other people?

It’s from being inquisitive. Things pop up and then I think you just start to develop a style and then you work within that style. So if you find a new ingredient or a new flavour or a new colour, even…you know, I like to paint pictures and it’s really just about having a style and then adding to that style and seeing if you can push it and how far you can push it. Then also being able to edit it down. You have to take time thinking about it. I take time thinking about combinations and then try to edit that down. For me, less is always more. Then being with my staff; people have different skills and it’s making something that is going to be able to be made and understood pretty quickly. That’s’ important to me and the generation I work with.

Do you like setting yourself challenges? I was thinking about when you launched All Day Donuts and everyone raved about how light and fluffy they were. Do you have to be the best? Or what is it about for you?

I don’t necessarily think it’s about being the best, but it has to be the best I can do. So I just need to keep tuning it until I have taken it as far as I can take it and then other people come in and help me and collaborate on recipes. So many people have come through and we have worked together. The recipe I was using at the start has developed a little bit, but not that much. I think it’s about taking it as far as I can and then trusting that we are thinking about it critically along the way.

Amazing. You are very generous with what you share in terms of the book and even on Instagram, I’ve seen some of your advice for cooking burgers and not drying them out om the grill too much…

I don’t think there are any secrets to this life. There are no secrets. I don’t know more than you, I just know what I know and how I strive for happiness every day and the things I work in and I like to share that and if someone gets something out of that, great. If someone wants to vote on whether they think baked beans or tinned spaghetti are better in a jaffle, great. It’s hilarious to me. it’s just a cool thing and it’s about sharing. That’s why the show has guests in every episode. Some of the guests were quite nervous when they came in but it’s just about having fun with what we are doing. A lot of people say, you’ve just got to be having fun and that’s a strange concept that you have to try to have fun. You’re just having fun or not. I think that’s like food; it’s delicious or it’s not.

I think you’ve really hit the nail on the hospitality head as well because it’s about sharing, it’s about fun and it’s about being in the moment and enjoying things. It’s an absolute joy watching you on Mean Cuisine and the jaffle vote or even the tuna bake versus salmon pattie poll you did on Instagram.

That tuna bake…people messaged asking me, dude, what are you doing, tuna bake is cat food and I’m like, ok cool, don’t eat it then.

It gets people talking.

It does and some people have a lot to say and some haven’t, some people just watch. Some people stop me in the street. I had a guy shout out to me the other day, Tuna Bake for life! I thought that was cool. That’s so funny.

Thank you and thank you for sharing so much with me now. I really appreciate that. Keep up the good work, it’s awesome.

Thanks so much for your time. Stay tuned.

Beatbox Kitchen