Nayran Tabiei has brought the cuisine of her homeland to the Flavours of Syria cafe in Melbourne.
The scent of sumac-flavoured chicken, fried almonds and garlicky shakshuka beckons, tantalising the hungry towards Nayran Tabiei’s cosy
Flavours Of Syria cafe at a quiet end of Chapel Street in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Flavours of Syria is a few minutes walk from the main strip of Carlisle Street’s op shops, supermarkets and cafes, St Kilda Primary School and the St Kilda Post Depot. This means there’s not much to attract foot traffic to this area of Chapel Street, and so Tabiei’s cafe has remained, largely, a local treasure and word-of-mouth attraction.
Tabiei is an asylum seeker from Syria’s capital of Damascus who escaped the Syrian war in 2011 after her home and coffee shop were bombed. She and her husband along with their then 4-year-old daughter travelled to Lebanon, then to Dubai, Thailand and Indonesia, before finally arriving in Australia. Her three sons, now 15, 20 and 23, stayed with their grandparents in Iran.