THE SOCIAL KITCHEN
Gemmayze St ’s Samir Allen and his grandmother Pauline talk family, tradition and the power food has to keep history alive
“I remember a boy saying to me… ‘ Our family eats to live. The Farry’s live to eat’”. Pauline Farry and her grandson Samir Allen burst into laughter. “We do live to eat,” Samir agrees. “But it’s not so much that we love eating. It’s that we love food”.
Samir, the owner and head chef of Karangahape Rd restaurant Gemmayze St, has drawn on his family’s rich history to create its award-winning modern Lebanese menu.
Samir’s maternal side, the Farry family, arrived from Lebanon in gold rush Dunedin more than 130 years ago. They have been immersed in the hospitality industry for generations – Samir’s greatgrandfather, grandparents, mother and aunt have all owned restaurants, bars and even a hotel.
Despite this impressive legacy, Samir credits his nana Pauline for sparking his passion for food. Gemmayze St, he says, is a love letter to her and his grandfather Tom.
“My understanding of hospitality came from Nana’s house. It wasn’t just like going to someone’s house for dinner – it was more of an experience. It was kind of almost like a restaurant service, an azeemi.”
An azeemi, Pauline explains, is a party where birthdays, anniversaries, homecomings and Christmases are celebrated with many different kinds of courses – both savoury and sweet.
“It’s basically like a dinner party but not a dinner party where everyone gets their own plate. It’s like a big family sharing. We call it an azeemi because it is about eating,” says Samir.
Together Pauline and Samir list their favourite dishes – stuffed steak, mahshi warak enab
( stuffed grape leaves), apricot chicken, kibbeh ( minced lamb with cracked wheat), mahshi malfouf ( stuffed cabbage rolls), Lebanese chicken and rice, fish in the sayneeyeh ( fried fish baked with tomato, garlic and parsley).
The food, they say, is a unique combination of both Lebanese flavours and local ingredients that was born from necessity.
“When the First World War was on, you couldn’t go into a shop and buy rice. You couldn’t buy olive oil, you couldn’t buy grape leaves – all those important things,” says Pauline.
“Also tahini and spices,” adds Samir.
“My mother had to adapt” says Pauline.
“She had to use local products, because we couldn’t get anything,” says Samir. “In B’sharri [the family’s village in Lebanon] they grew tomatoes and they would make their own puree and they kept it in jars. We used Wattie’s tomato soup because we didn’t have that kind of thing in Dunedin.”
It’s a style of cooking which has laid the foundation for the cuisine at Gemmayze St, which is described as the next chapter of the family’s story.
“A lot of things that Samir does now, I see the way my mother used to do it. The way he does his shoulder of lamb – you know, mum would always add things. She was very game,” says Pauline.
It’s through the ritual of cooking for the family that these beloved dishes have been kept alive.
“There’s no recipe,” Samir says. “There’s nothing written down. It’s the same at Gemmayze St. The chefs once said to me, ‘ What’s the recipe for the falafel?’ I said ‘ I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it’. Mix it all together, mince everything up and then we season it and taste it. That’s how Nana cooks, how my aunties cook, how Mum cooks. There’s no recipes. It’s like muscle memory.”
“To learn it you’ve got to cook it together. You’ve got to watch. You couldn’t borrow the recipe from Mum and do it. You’ve got to see it.”
Samir says that while it gets harder to connect regularly as the family continues to grow and expand, their food is one thing that keeps them together. To this day they gather around the same mahogany table where Pauline’s own mother served food.
“We lost a lot of our culture, what you would call Lebanese culture like our language and certain stuff like that. The food, the azeemi is what’s kept us together, I think. It’s kept that culture of Lebanese food. Everyone still learns it. Everyone learns dishes from their parents. It’s how we interact with each other and why everyone is still close,” says Samir.