Tom Sarafian

Hi Tom, how are you? What a great set-up.

It's usually full of people running around, peeling lots of garlic, boiling chickpeas.

That's what I would expect when youre making hummus and toum.

These are the chickpeas. We get quite a few at a time, and these huge buckets of tahini everywhere we go through quite a lot. And we boil them in the pressure cookers here. Then we put them in the big robot coupe there. It's a bit of a crazy three-day sort of operation. That's the first day of it. Then we chill what we call the base of the chick peas in the cool room. And then the third day, we put it back into the machine with freshly squeezed lemon juice and add toum, a Lebanese garlic sauce. It is a three-day process to make the hummus.

How much does that make? How much do you make in a batch?

About 100 kilos. So, depending on how busy we are, we make it fresh every Tuesday and Wednesday. And then Thursday morning we send it out to the stockists. So we get the orders in, they'll start rolling in now over the course of Monday usually and we never really know exactly what's going to happen and how long our days are going to be, but we are pretty flexible. We get the orders in on Monday and make it all Tuesday, Wednesday and send it out on Thursday.

How long have you been doing that?

It'll be two years next month actually. Two years in August. It has flown by. We've been here for about a year. We were in a little tiny, shared kitchen in West Footscray when I first started, because I just didn't know how it was going to go. We outgrew that pretty quickly and that that really limited the amount of hummus that we could make. When we came here, we could really take on more stockists. Some of our biggest customers now, we had to say no to at the beginning because there was no way we could have taken on anymore. That was all that we could make over there. and now we've got two separate lines, harissa and toum as well and we are going to start making baba ganoush.

And are you supplying to restaurants as well? Or is it just retail?

Retail. It is something I considered doing, but I think the nature of the product is, that it's more about quality than quantity and for restaurants, you know, some people get in touch and then I tell them basically what I just told you about the product, the process and the price of the product and they had thought it was like all the other hummus that you can just buy in bulk and it's quite cheap and they could just put it on their menus. Some bars have got it on their menu, a few friends have got bars around town. There's a gin distillery cellar door around the corner here, and they've got it on their bar menu. But they're serving small bowls, so that works. But not your average kebab shop who might be serving big ladles of it at a time. It probably wouldn't work out for that.

I was going to ask a stupid question about wat sets your hummus apart from everyone elses, but that question is because I had a friend from Israel and he claimed he made the best hummus and apparently families would discuss what a good hummus was. So, what is it for you?

I make a more sort of traditional fancy Lebanese style. My dad's side are Egyptian Armenians, and they lived in Egypt most of their lives. I follow those sort of styles of hummus, real authentic hummus. Just a lot of love, but mostly a lot of good quality ingredients. It's all about what goes into the machine that makes the hummus; the best chickpeas, it was never about finding the cheapest ingredients to use to manipulate them to make the most cost effective hummus. It was never about making money, to be honest with you. I'm like most chefs crazy – I don't care about making money. I just want to make the best products. Everything from that salt its really expensive salt and it's the best quality sold in my opinion.

And I see Mount Zero olive oil.

Mount Zero olive oil. That's the Mount Zero pink clay salt. The paprika that we put on top, the tahini that we get. The fact that we are getting fresh garlic and peeling it ourselves. No one does that. We go through about 20 kilos of garlic this week. And this is actually really quite a good size at the moment. Sometimes the garlic we get is literally that small and it takes about an hour to peel on a good day. We get fresh lemons that we're squeezing. Most companies would either be buying the peeled imported garlic, which to me is just like the worst thing in the world or they'd be using garlic powder or even just not even garlic at all. And instead of freshly squeezed lemon juice, they would be buying citric acid just to give it a lemon powder flavour. And that extends the shelf life quite a lot as well., or they'd just be buying cheap and nasty pre-squeezed lemon juice, an artificial sort of thing. They wouldn't be using the extra virgin olive oil that's locally produced. They'd be using some crap oil. When you buy that stuff, you can get a big tub for five bucks, but you can taste it. When I go and buy a supermarket hummus and I haven't for a very long time, the first thing I taste is citric acid. It is a really chemically sourness and not in a good way at all. It's quite off-putting. And the texture of it is pretty firm and thickened. It's not really like you can dip into it, but you can't really use it in any other way than it's been designed to, as in eating it straight out of the plastic tub, if that makes sense. Whereas the hummus that we make is versatile and then you can use it; you can spread it onto a sandwich, or you can put it onto a plate and dress it up like in a traditional Arabic way of putting fried lamb, fried nuts, butter on top or my version that I sometimes do in the restaurants for seafood. Things like barbecued mushrooms or beetroot or pumpkin, whatever beautiful seasonal vegetables that are around. You can do a lot with it the way that we make it in that sort of authentic Arabic style.

I saw on your Instagram that you've got lots of little hints and recipe ideas for using the product, so that's helpful.

That's a big part of it is to teach people who may not know the possibilities of these products. Like hummus. People in this country think that it's just a dip, something you just eat cold out of the fridge with crackers and there's nothing wrong with that, but it can be so much more than that. So that's something I try to do, show the many possibilities with it.

I was interested to know, because obviously you're really passionate about what you're making here and you're still doing some popups, for example this weekend, the Free to Feed lunch. Do you prefer this now to working in a restaurant?

Yes and no. Sometimes it's great to have the flexibility of coming in and out of really busy periods. But I really miss having a restaurant. The last restaurant I was working at Saracen closed with only a few weeks notice and it was pretty heartbreaking and I wasn't ready to stop cooking that food. We started popping up around the place. We did a substantial pop-up at Little Andorra for three or four months and I've continued to cook that food and slightly experiment with some new food as well in doing these popups and that's been great. It has been great to work in different people's kitchens with different teams, to see how they operate and get insight into the businesses as well. I'm trying and working towards opening my own restaurant. So thats part of that journey and it's been really valuable to do lots of different popups in different places and just get all the practice and skills and insight into opening a business, which has been really great.

That's very exciting. I think that's a wise approach, isn't it, because, depending on where you've worked, there can be, ways of doing things and it is good to get that fresh insight of how other people are running businesses or kitchens or whatever it is.

A hundred percent. It's been really good and I feel very lucky to be in that position. This is the backbone of what I do here. This is like my Monday to Friday, nine to five, if you will. And it keeps me free and flexible and quite agile to move around on weekends and evenings. We did a few residencies at places like Cumulus and Gray and Gray over two or three week periods. And that was a push because I was here pretty early in the mornings peeling lots of garlic and juicing lemons and cooking all the chickpeas, et cetera. All those things. And then heading to those restaurants in the evenings, so that was hard work, but really good though. I don't regret that at all. Its best when it is here Monday to Friday and then I'll do something like Free to Feed on the weekend and slowly chip away at that prep in the spare time during the week and keep it really well balanced. That's been pretty awesome to be able to do that and to still be able to be have some work life balance and be home in the evenings, spending time with my partner and my friends and family and doing all that kind of stuff that you don't get to do as much when you are stuck in a kitchen in a restaurant all day and night, which I've been doing for almost 20 years. It's been pretty amazing to stop doing that, and live like this for a little while, but I still really want to open a restaurant and go back to doing that even though it is a bit mad, because that's where my heart really is. It is being in a restaurant expressing my creativity through food. That's when I'm ultimately at my happiest and that's what I'm trying to get to. I'm in no rush. I'd really like to do something sooner rather than later of course. But, I've been pretty patient. There's been quite a rollercoaster of opportunities different offers that have come in to do certain things and it's pretty exciting and things that have come pretty close to making happen, but nothing's been exactly the right thing that's felt like the right thing just yet. I'm still looking for the perfect thing to happen, and I'm sure it will soon and I'm very excited for it.

I was reading about you before I came and I was really interested to note that you went to Elwood Secondary College, because my nephew, who also is Armenian Australian is in year nine at Elwood and Raf loves cooking. My sister-in-law's Greek Armenian and her mum Zizi cooks the best food, lots of kibbeh and delicious, amazing things. And I've been wanting to speak to you because I spoke to Joseph a few years ago and he spoke so highly of you then, but then I think it must have just been before all of the lockdowns and all of the things that happened, so it's great to talk to you now. So thinking about my nephew Raffi growing up around all the delicious food, it sounds as though from your bio that you too have always been around food and always interested in food or cooking.

Totally. From a very young age, my father being a chef, my grandfather being a chef, feeling like everyone in our, in our family was somewhat connected to food. And my mum worked in restaurants for a long time and she was a gardener. I grew up with dad teaching me how to cook the food that mum would grow in the backyard and these kinds of things. So I was very lucky and very connected to food very early on. I wasn't very interested in much else and I wasn't very good at school. I just had my heart set on becoming a chef pretty early on and that was all I ever really wanted to do basically.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because quite often chefs make that comment about not being good at school, but I think what you do is really complicated and, and multi-level and layered and requires a lot of skill and know-how and intelligence and all of those things. So I feel as though its a problem with schooling, with education, that we are making people feel like that. There are so many pathways and I think that's what we need to encourage people to look at that and celebrate and know that there is a different way of doing things. Schools can be quite linear, and constrained by ATARs or timetables. But the growth mindset we talk about in schools, you need that as a chef, that continuous learning and that love of learning about what you do and that passion. More people need that. More students need that.

100%. I couldn't agree with that more. I was definitely like that, I think, and I guess, when I say I wasn't good at school, I wasn't good at the structure that I was in. And the curriculum just didn't feel right for me. I was in a bit of trouble at school. I was expelled from Elwood actually, and then I went to a community college for a little while and then I came back to Elwood to finish my VCE. I just scraped by kind of kind of style. Then when I went to start an apprenticeship, I didn't go for William Angus where everyone else was going. I went to Swinburne in Prahran and it was a little bit alternative in that sense that it was a much smaller classroom, much more hands on, much more personal with the teachers. I had some really fantastic teachers, but they were more down to earth. You could talk to them. And I remember saying things to them like, I don't really want to cook this really out of date French recipe that I'm never going to use again, and it just doesn't really do anything for me. Can I do this instead? And they were like, okay, cool. I was apprenticing at the Stokehouse at the time, so I was there once a week and I used school as a bit of a place to experiment with different ideas and stuff that you don't get to do when you're working at a pretty busy, pretty serious fine dining restaurant. You're just cooking their recipes all day, every day and you know, you're pretty tired on your days off. So it was nice to have that creative freedom there that was really good for me. But, like you were saying, there's those certain styles that aren't for everyone when it comes to, to teaching the curriculum.

Tell me about your discovery of Greg Malouf.

I was actually working at the Stokehouse and one thing I really enjoyed doing, especially towards the end of my apprenticeship was cooking a lot of staff meals and that was another way I would get creative. I used to love cooking for family at home and friends on my days off. But staff meals were cool because you're cooking for your peers. I remember buying, or stumbling across Greg's, Lebanese and Syrian book, Saha. And it was mind-blowing because I was seeing dishes that I'd grown up eating at my grandparents' houses on special occasions, dishes that they would cook; Egyptian versions of those dishes that they grew up with. And seeing it in this beautiful finessed style that Greg has, whilst working and working towards becoming a chef who was cooking fine dining, basically. I had places like Attica in my sights and cooking at the high level that Stokehouse was and still is, but seeing that food styled like that was really inspiring and I've never seen it like that before.

I went to work with Greg at Momo and that was a turning point for me to start cooking that food professionally. I would cook it on my days off at home as well. I think I used to put my family through quite a few experimental dinners that we usually served at maybe 10.00pm. I would go to the markets and I would try all this crazy stuff, David Thompson recipes, dishes that took hours to make, but anyway, when I started cooking more Middle Eastern things at home, it felt a bit right and I could see my family thinking, oh, this is actually pretty good. And not having to pretend it was good. It felt right. It just felt at home for me.

I just kept going down that path and working with Greg and the team at Momo was amazing. I was set from there. Then I followed Greg to London to work with him further at Petersham Nurseries. And I worked at some other incredible restaurants over there. I was very lucky in London. I went traveling around the Middle East after that and by the time I got back to Melbourne a few years later, that was it. I was set to cook Arabic food and the very best versions of it that I possibly could. I'm just obsessed with it and I love it. It's so much fun.

I can see why traveling around those countries would be really important. And obviously London seems to be a great stepping stone or a great part of a chef's journey. Do you think it is necessary to travel as a chef?

It's not necessary as such, but it's pretty amazing if you have the opportunity to do it. It's pretty eye-opening. There are so many possibilities over there. One of the things for me was seeing different produce and seeing different ways of applying techniques to that produce that you don't see as much here, especially at the time. This was almost 10 years ago, I think. There werent as many variations in produce here. So seeing incredible things over there were really inspiring. I definitely think you should do it. I wish I had done more and spent more time and travelled more and cooked some more overseas, but you can only do so much, I guess.

You seem to be inspired by it all anyway, but how do you keep inspired? Do you look at books or go on Instagram or what do you use?

I've always loved cookbooks and that's pretty much the only kind of book that I read, the cookbook, for the stories and things as well, not just looking at recipes. But we're so lucky; there are so many incredible cookbooks out there. I was going back in time and looking at old recipes rather than new techniques. I'm more interested in old techniques and doing things, the long, hard, tedious ways. I love those ancient methods of cookery much more than modern techniques, which have never really appealed to me at all. I want to know how and why they were doing things for the first time back in time. I love seeing those traditions still alive today in Lebanon and seeing and firsthand experiencing, and being invited to parties where they were serving things like kibbeh nayyeh, it's a raw lamb dish pounded in a marble, mortar and pestle. And there was this incredible lady who was known as the queen of kibbeh and she was just sitting there pounding the raw lamb and adding a little bit of spice, a little bit of salt, a little bit fat, a little bit of toum, and then serving it to you in her hand.I thought that was amazing. I want to build a huge modern pestle when I open a restaurant and I want to do things that way. I don't want to put it in the machine and fast track and take a shortcut. I've got no interest in doing that. I like doing things the hard way. It's a lot of what we do here, I think there's a real beauty in that and I'm inspired by that. I've come across a lot of those sort of things in cookbooks, by traveling as well. Instagram's great to see what other people are up to, because you connect with people on the other side of the world. You see their styles are maybe aligned with yours and then you connect with them and talk about food with them, that's really healthy. I think it's really great to do things like that. I take inspiration from all kinds of places.

And what's on the menu for Saturday?

This Saturday? There are still few tickets left. Actually, the Saturday cooking class we're doing is sold out. The purpose of that class is to show people the potential and possibilities of, of things like hummus and toum and harissa. Well be talking about those subjects during the, the lunch as well. It's very much a collaboration between myself and the team at Free to Feed. I'm cooking some of my favourite dishes, hummus with fried lamb, Lebanese pine nuts, which are my new obsession there.

I saw that on Instagram. What's the difference?

I wish I had something here to show you this. They are probably three times the length of the regular pine nut. The flavour is just so much more delicate and subtle. I just don't like the flavour of the regular pine nuts. I'm so spoiled now that I've tried these pine nuts, because I can't go back to the other ones. They are about six times the price, $100 to $130 a kilo for the Lebanese pine nuts. Whereas the other ones are maybe like 20 bucks or less. When you eat those cheap, nasty, pine nuts, they're quite strong and overpowering in a dish. Its really, really off putting for me. Whereas the Lebanese ones, they're so sweet and beautiful, like just a subtle flavour that carries so nicely through a dish.

Do they come from a different tree or something?

There must be different varieties, I think.

So not just the Lebanese sun?

It's probably a bit of that, but, I think the Mediterranean variety, they're not just Lebanese, you'll find them in different areas around there. They seem to be a different variety. They are huge. I think they're quite a bit softer as well. They're quite creamy when you eat them raw, they're almost like a totally different nut really, when you put them side by side. I fry those in butter and then add onions and then add the lamb to that and put that on top of hummus.That's one of the starters we're doing. I'm doing shish tawook, which is a Lebanese style charcoal chicken kebab, which my touch is, I actually marinate that in some Persian spices like turmeric and ground fenugreek leaves with some sort of onions and then cook that over charcoal. It's really beautiful and smoky and then I brush that – it's probably one of my favourite ways to apply toum is brushing it over charcoal chicken. And then we're doing a slow cooked lamb shoulder with some harissa. And the Free to Feed tam are doing some beautiful rice and salads and some of their incredible desserts, which I had a taste of recently and they're amazing. We've got Jamsheed Wines who are a local winery in Preston, and they're fantastic. They are matching some of that to lunch as well. It will be a good day.

How great. Just my final question, with all of your experience and what you know now, what would your advice be to a person who was thinking about becoming chef?

Do it. Don't even think about it. It's an awesome job and it's an awesome life. To be able to cook and feed people is one of the greatest gifts, I think. And to make a career out of that is a beautiful, beautiful life. It opens up a lot of possibilities, in terms of travel, and a lot of doors, more now than ever. There's a lot of different angles to becoming a chef and to go into different directions. I would encourage anyone who's thinking about it to go for it. It's hard work, but it's very rewarding.

Tom Sarafian