Lakemba’s Haldon Street Festival offers a world of flavours to explore

Lakemba is putting its melting pot of flavours in the spotlight this weekend with its popular Haldon Street Festival.

Lakemba gets a bad rap. If you’ve never ventured to the southwestern Sydney suburb, it would be too easy to write it off. But you would be doing yourself, and the area, a disservice.

This Saturday the suburb celebrates the Haldon Street Festival — now in its 15th year. Visit and you’ll find a melting pot of cultures on show in the diverse and vibrant suburb.

Lebanon meets Polynesia meets Pakistan, Sudan, Morocco and more. And what better way to get to know these cultures than through their food?

Patisserie Arja

129 Haldon St, Lakemba

Ph: 9740 8320

After working as a bus driver for 13 years, Nick Arja decided to go back to his roots and opened a cake shop in 1995.

His father had a reputation as the best pastry chef in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, and when Nick resurrected the family recipes, they proved a hit.

Along with ever-popular standards like baklava, you’ll find mamoul, semolina biscuits filled with walnuts, dates or pistachios. Znoud el-sit are pastry rolls filled with kashtar, a clotted cream made from milk skins, and topped with rosewater, but do yourself a favour and try the house specialty, mafroka.

A plate of thick, sweet, baked semolina is topped with a generous layer of kashtar and sprinkled with roasted almonds. A spoonful gives you a mix of textures — sticky, soft and crunchy — while the cheese and nuts downplay the sweetness of the semolina.

“I make them the traditional way,” Arja says.

“I don’t use oil; it’s no good for you. I use ghee; it’s filling so you only need a bit and it doesn’t give you an uncomfortable feeling, like oily food does.”

Arja has seen the area transform over the last two decades. “It was a Lebanese community and even though the demographic has changed, my old customers are still with me and travel to me,” he says.

“Ramadan is busy. Mamoul is popular for Muslims in Ramadan, and Christians like it for Easter. They’re a celebratory biscuit.

“The Bengal and Pakistani community prefer the French-influenced petite fours so we make more of them now.”

Island Dreams Cafe

47 Haldon St, Lakemba

Ph: 9740 9909

Twenty years ago, when Alimah Bilda opened her restaurant specialising in Christmas Island and Cocos Islands cuisine, it was a struggle to get the local community to accept it.

“The first thing they would ask is if it’s halal, even though I’m wearing a headscarf,” she says. “There’s a thing that Muslims are only supposed to be Arabs; it was so hard when we first started.”

Her perseverance has paid off, with people travelling for her nutty, spiced satay fragrant with lemongrass and paired with charcoal-scented meat skewers.

Bilda, who was born on Christmas Island, says the cuisine’s Malaysian influence came from the Singaporean and Malay labourers who came to the island.

The menu at Island Dreams reflects the island’s indigenous produce, the Asian impact plus the Arab element needed to lure locals.

“I mix my two foods and I have to twist it again with Arab food and change the spices because customers are more into the cinnamon, cardamom and cumin flavours,” she says.

The most popular dishes are beef rendang and ayam panggang, a lemon, chilli chicken dish with yellow turmeric rice.

Bilda’s cafe also has its own coffee blend, which took six weeks to get right, and serves tarik, a milky Malaysian tea spiced with cardamom and cinnamon.

“Tea and roti gandus is a typical Cocos Island breakfast,” Bilda says. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe.

Desi Hutt

164 Haldon St, Lakemba

Ph: 9740 7860

Rana Masood and Asifa Khan had no hospitality experience when they opened their first Pakistani restaurant in 1998.

Their daughter, Aaruj Khan, says her mum simply cooked the same dishes she would prepare at home.

“We specialise in Pakistani and North Indian cuisine,” Khan says. “We use a lot of garam masala, chilli and turmeric and we’re known for our tandoori and butter chickens.”

The restaurant is halal and was one of the first Pakistani restaurants on Haldon St. It became so popular that there are two more Desi Hutts — in Harris Park and Auburn.

Khan says each restaurant has a distinct feel. “The Harris Park one also has Chinese dishes on the menu, because Indians tend to like that but it didn’t work here so we keep it traditional,” she says. “The majority of our customers are Lebanese and caucasian.”

Jasmins

30B Haldon St, Lakemba

Ph: 9740 3589

Don’t confuse the Jasmins in Punchbowl or Leichhardt with this one. As co-owner Bashir Ghazal points out, this was the original.

It’s been going strong for 17 years and reputedly makes the best falafel in town.

“It’s made fresh daily and is very crispy,” Ghazal says. “We single-fry it. If you double-fry, it soaks up too much oil.”

The restaurant goes through 150kg of chickpeas a week for hommous, fatteh and falafel. And it takes 30kg of garlic to make enough toum — the white, fluffy garlic sauce that is a perfect match for grilled meats — to satisfy demand.

“We don’t add anything to it. Some people use potato to make it fluffy but we mix it for 15 minutes and slowly pour in vegetable oil,” he says.

Al Andalus Cafe

127 Haldon St, Lakemba

Ph: 9758 0078

With its striped banquet seats and colourful wooden tables and stools, there’s no mistaking the Moroccan influence at Al Andalus.

Rather than a straight mint tea, the cafe blends Chinese gunpowder green tea with fresh mint and sugar in a double-brew process to extract maximum flavour.

The first pour from the teapot is sweet and minty, while the second reveals the earthy taste of the green tea.

It’s a great way to finish off an eating tour of Lakemba, fresh and fragrant to help you digest all that falafel, tandoori chicken and roti.

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Twitter: @RenataGortan

● Haldon Street Festival, Haldon St, Lakemba; August 23, 10am-4pm

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Originally published as Lakemba’s Haldon Street Festival offers a world of flavours to explore