DUBAI: Three brothers Mohamad, Wassim and Omar Orfali from Aleppo, Syria have been working to reinvent Aleppo’s cuisine in a 60-cover restaurant in Dubai, Orfali Bros, that is open every single day from midday to midnight. Their work has been awarded with a Bib Gourmand in the first Dubai Michelin awards released earlier this week.
Mohamad Orfali paved the way for his brothers fighting against all odds to convince his mother that cooking was ultimately the right decision for him. Today, the three have created their own brand of cuisine comprising of food they love to eat.
But what Mohamad has been doing is not just studying Aleppian cuisine but he has been working hard to showcase elements like sustainability, seasonality. But that did not come instantly. At first he was focusing on international cuisine but it was an encounter with a Spanish chef that opened his eyes to his country’s potential when it came to food. From then on there was no turning back.
This is Mohamad’s story.
Let’s begin at the beginning. In your website you speak about not knowing what you wanted to do in life. That you found support from your father to go to cooking school but your mother was strongly opposed to you going to culinary school. How did you go about convincing her?
It took me at least three years to start to make her change her mind. It was very difficult with my mother and my whole family. She wanted me to do something else and thought that cooking was for women. After three years she finally started to see things differently but then felt really bad when my brother Wassim got into pastry. She couldn’t believe that her two sons were going to turn cooking into their careers.
At what point was she convinced this was the right step for you?
At the point when my brother got into pastry we just said: listen, this is what we like and what we’re going to do. And when she saw us happy, she accepted it. Just with one condition, we had to clean after our mess in her kitchen hehehe. In the beginning my brother and I would use our house kitchen to cook and try stuff and our mother hated the mess we left.
Your brothers followed the same course? Did you pave the way for them? Was it easier for them?
Our father was very supportive and to be fair, i think that it’s not that my mother wasn’t, she was just scared I guess. She didn’t know what was going to happen with all of us after choosing this career. But with time and seeing how happy we were and the success that came from all that dedication, she understood. Like a lot of older brothers, I paved the way for Wassim and Omar but they’ve also worked hard to achieve what they have.
There was this moment, I’ve read, which was a make or break moment when a group of guests, your friends, came to a restaurant where you had to replace a waiter who failed to turn up for work. One of the chefs must have noticed how uncomfortable you were to tell you that if you were ashamed of your work you should leave it. What really happened and how did you bounce back?
We are a big family and most of the men in our family are doctors, engineers or businessmen. But none of them work in the service industry and being a chef or a waiter is not very well received. It wasn’t easy for us. I used to work in a pizzeria in the area where most of my family and friends lived and one day one of the waiters got sick and missed work. Since I was the youngest in the kitchen I had to replace them and it turns out that a bunch of my friends were there, on the first table. It was a very uncomfortable moment and their first reaction was to ask me if everything was ok with me or my family. That’s the only logical explanation that they could find for me being there, that something was wrong with my family.
I told them: guys, this is the story. I’m going to school and working here but today I had to fill in for a waiter. They were really surprised and when I went back inside the kitchen I felt terrible. I told the chef that I didn’t want to be waiting tables, I WAS A CHEF. At that point, one of the bakers came up to me and said: If you’re feeling shy or feel like it’s not you then quit. If you want to succeed in this career you have to respect and acknowledge the fact that we serve people and we cook for people.
This story sounds a little strange today but the world has changed a lot since then. This was around 1996. This was not a European country where there’s a tradition of being proud of working in this industry. I had no internet, no social media, no references or examples of people being proud of being a chef or a waiter or sommelier.
Last week, for example, one guest came with his kid and said that he was very happy because his kid wanted to be a chef and asked me for advice. In my time it wasn’t like that.
You speak about not really learning about Syrian and Middle Eastern cuisine. How did you manage to acquire the knowledge away from the cliches and what is known about your cuisine?
In the beginning, when I started getting into the culinary world, I wasn’t that excited to become an Arabic chef, well actually cook. Here it would have been an Arabic cook. Chefs would be someone who leans more towards French or Italian cuisine, for example.
I worked in a lot of different restaurants but the funny thing is that even if you were working at an Italian or French restaurant, you had to serve kebabs too. So you had to learn how to make both things and I started from there.
At some point I realized that I had a lack of food identity. I was there making a pizza but I didn’t really know anything about pizza and had never been to Italy. I also realized that I knew nothing about my own gastronomic culture. I know how to cook but I don’t understand where all these recipes come from, why we do things one way or another, the history behind the dishes, why we call them this or that, nothing.
One of the things that opened an eye on our own cuisine was a trip to Spain. There, in Alicante, I spoke to a very famous chef and told him how excited I was about being there, meeting Ferran Adria and getting to learn or try the whole molecular cuisine movement. He replied by asking about my cuisine and letting me know how they see Aleppo as a major culinary gem. What do you know about your cuisine? He asked. And I had no answer. I had to change that.
When I came back home and after a lot of research I discovered that we actually had things similar to molecular gastronomy for years and years, we are sustainable, we’re seasonal, we’re about great and native ingredients, about harmony and matching flavors. We’re modern and classic at the same time. It was a surprise and a big lesson to start appreciating the food that I saw regularly throughout my entire life.
Many people have heard of Aleppo for the wrong reasons in the past few years as it became the center of war. At the same time the city has an incredible history. How would you describe Aleppian cuisine? What is Aleppian cuisine today?
It’s really hard to summarize Alleppian cuisine today. It’s not one thing. If you go to my website you’ll find the result of a lot of our research in that subject. We explain it by dividing it into subjects like sustainability, seasonality, harmony, flavors, ingredients, the history and the silk road, the tradition and craftsmanship in areas like cheese and desserts… But for me Aleppian cuisine is so many things. We’re talking about layers of culture.
Because of the Silk Road, Aleppian cuisine has inspired many different culinary traditions and cultures around the world. As that chef said to me in Spain: it is a gem.
You set up a bistro in Dubai, one of the most modern cities in the world. How easy or difficult is it to create Aleppian cuisine? Do you struggle with local ingredients or is that not an issue? Why a bistro?
No no no. Dubai has one of the best supply chains in the world. If you need an ingredient, local or from any part of the world, you can have it in one or two days.
You also had a number of programmes on TV? How important was this journey for you?
TV shows came to my life and pretty much introduced me to the Arab world. We’re talking about more than 75 million viewers at one point. But more than becoming famous, to me they were a huge challenge to create all that content. Every show had to include new and interesting content and It motivated me to research, discover, and try new things.
Most of the recipes that you can try in Orfali Bros come from that era. They are the result of me taking chances on TV, creating modern and original versions of old dishes or combining inspiration from different cultures. I think I was one of the very first chefs to do modern Arabic cuisine and even though it wasn’t very well accepted in the beginning, it ended up becoming the foundation for my current success and inspiration for a new generation of young chefs that now can see our cuisine through a different perspective.
Dubai is well known for international chefs but slowly a few chefs like you are starting to leave a distinct mark on the city with clearly a much more local and regional offering. How important is this for you and for the Middle East in general?
It’s very important. First of all Dubai is a city of people from all over the world. It’s super diverse and the challenge is to bring all those people together in a restaurant. The idea started with a group of chefs (locals and expats) that started to create neighbourhood restaurants and bistros, places where guests can find good and affordable food and not fine dining. It is gastronomy but not fine dining. The idea was difficult to explain in the beginning but now the concept is gaining more and more followers in the city.
In Orfali Bros we also decided to hire young chefs to train them. We have over 20 different nationalities. What we do is train new people and with time we see how that affects the city and the new wave of chefs.
In Orfali Bros we’re not serving local food. We’re also expats. We are, just like Dubai, a mix of cultures and that’s why people are more and more interested in what’s happening here and fly to Dubai to eat.
Where do you want to be in the next five years? Is opening a restaurant in Aleppo on the cards in future?
We want to keep evolving but at the time I don’t think that Aleppo is on the cards for us. Dubai has given us a great base to keep making people happy with our cooking and to make Orfali Bros better and better every year.
How would you describe your cuisine?
Our cuisine is one that respects tradition but breaks rules at the same time. We’re constantly pushing the boundaries of cooking to discover new flavors and sensations. We take inspiration from travels and all cultures to create flavorful food and pastries. It’s simply food that we love to eat. We serve them because they link us to our past and remind us of who we are. We want our dishes, our cuisine, to invoke a sense of creativity, pride, and joy.
You’ve studied French cuisine and also molecular cuisine which you said at one moment that it did not fit into Aleppian cuisine. At the same time, you are working on giving a modern twist to your country and region’s food. How do you go about this? What comes first, the idea for the dish or the techniques you are going to use?
EVERYTHING. We think about details. We think about the guests, if they are going to like it. We also think about the ingredients. We don’t want to do anything that makes us waste ingredients or use only small parts of them. Is it local? How many local ingredients can I use in this new idea? And then it has to go with our style of Orfali Bros.
So we talk about ingredients, about seasonality, about sustainability, and most of all about it being delicious.
The World’s 50 Best and Michelin have now firmly arrived in Dubai? How is the scene going to change in your view?
It’s just one more step into making Dubai’s gastronomic scene and culture even stronger and more respected. Local and regional award ceremonies have definitely shed light on numerous restaurants, hidden gems and delicacies in the region, and I am of the conviction that the world deserves more than just a glimpse of what the culinary scene in Dubai is, at its best. Through international awards like the Michelin guide, we discovered emerging and up and coming chefs, restaurants and cuisines all the way from a Buddhist monastery to a small restaurant nestled in the mountains of Spain. There is really no limit to what we can discover.
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