“A friend of mine, Andy Bowdy, runs Saga in Enmore. He’s famous for making crazy cakes, but he created something last year in lockdown which is like a Vietnamese crusty roll. He basically does a herbed crusted schnitzel, buffalo mozzarella, and a beurre noisette with capers, lemon, garlic and parsley poured over the top of it.”
Paul seems like a man who does his research. We sit in a quiet corner of his restaurant Aalia, under the cover of its flowing timber interior, looking out at the rain pounding on Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD, and he’s, well, reading his notes. It’s unsurprising from a chef whose menu design process consisted of studying cookery manuscripts dating way back to the 10th century.
“I found out that the oldest cookbooks in the world were Middle Eastern,” he says. “It was actually a bit of a revelation to me because you always think that French is the forefather of all cookery. It changed my perception on food and I went down a massive rabbit hole.”
For a chef with Egyptian heritage who has worked at some of Sydney’s best restaurants, he discovered the wonders of North African and Middle Eastern cuisine relatively late in his journey.
It changed my perception on food and I went down a massive rabbit hole
“I started cooking Italian food as most chefs did. I left that and went into new-age modern Australian of the early noughties, at a place called the Summit, which was really cool to a young 17, 18-year-old kid. You know, brushing glasses with chlorophyll paint made from parsley, all that sort of wanky stuff.”
From there Paul joined the Four in Hand (“a lot of nose-to-tail cookery, whole animal kind of stuff”), before a year at Gordon Ramsey’s Pétrus in London. After that he opened up his own bistro (“didn’t last very long”) before returning to Sydney and the Four in Hand as head chef. Following spells at Monopole and Fish Butchery, he got the opportunity to head-up Nour, his first go at Middle Eastern cuisine, which for him, as he describes, “was like the last frontier.”
I guess the brief was: a Middle Eastern cuisine that no one had ever seen
In March 2022, the group behind Nour opened up Aalia, and Paul was tasked with designing a whole new Middle Eastern menu. It’s then that he delved into the cookery archives for inspiration and his personal fascination with the history of the dishes is palpable.
“I guess the brief was: a Middle Eastern cuisine that no one had ever seen. We don’t have tabbouleh on the menu, we don’t have hummus on the menu. I don’t have all the stereotypical stuff. I want something to showcase that Middle Eastern food can be so much more.”
It sounds fun. “Er, yeah. I’m giving you the good parts.”
