Rumi’s Joseph Abboud Wants You To Mess Up His New Cookbook (With Tasty Middle Eastern Food)

Photo: Peter Tarasiuk

The Melbourne chef’s first recipe collection is delicious, autobiographical, and made to be messy. Giving us a tour of his Melbourne home, he talks family, “food of Middle Eastern appearance”, and why tomatoes are a bit like keyboard music.

When Joseph Abboud first opened his restaurant Rumi 17 years ago, his proud mother bought him RUMI 06 numberplates to mark the occasion.

Tactfully, Abboud explained that personalised plates could be seen as naff. Undeterred, his mum put them on her own car, where they remain to this day, even after she upgraded from a Ford Laser to a Nissan Micra.

That’s one of many yarns from Abboud’s debut cookbook, Rumi. Like his recipes, his autobiographical essays are warm and irreverent. It’s like hanging out with a mate.

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There’s his years of hard graft in kitchens after quitting school; his rise through fine-dining establishments such as Est Est Est, MoMo and Ondine; and his homespun philosophies (he argues, for instance, that while tomatoes were only introduced to Lebanese cuisine 300 years ago, that doesn’t make them “inauthentic” in a tabouli).

“The same goes for the keyboard in Lebanese music. Not sure how long it’s been around, but I can bet the first time someone whipped out a keyboard during a jam session at EMI, it wasn’t met with ease,” he writes.

Family is knitted tightly into the Rumi story. Abboud’s mother-in-law proofread his essays, and it was she who impishly suggested he call his cooking style “food of Middle Eastern appearance” – in part so that people wouldn’t expect traditional Lebanese fare, but also so that they might think a little deeper. Rumi is named after the Middle Eastern philosopher, and the poetry of Kahlil Gibran is painted on the wall.

The book is an homage to a restaurant that’s both beloved among the local community in Brunswick East, and famous more widely. (There’s a recipe called The Quail That Anthony Bourdain Ate, referencing the late chef’s visit in 2009, when Matt Preston was filming No Reservations).

Abboud favours an egalitarian attitude over showing off, and says the book’s soft cover and matte paper are to encourage people to scribble and stain as they go. A kind of Wreck This Journal for cooks.

“If I had written this book in the first few years of Rumi, I would have tried really hard to impress other chefs, whereas now it’s genuinely written for people to cook from,” he tells Broadsheet. “Now I’m an old dog, I don’t care! We’ve been going all this time and we’ve never had a chef’s hat, but we’re respected.”

The 60-odd recipes range from beer snacks (which he knows purists will scoff at); to Rumi favourites such as Persian meatballs and shish barak yoghurt soup; to coffees, teas and Martinis; and – maybe to be safe – to his mother’s eggplant m’nazleh.

“I wanted to convey a certain vibe rather than have a prescriptive way of doing things,” he says. “I know it’s great to have fresh ground spices, but man – we can’t even cook for ourselves most days, let alone source the best ingredients. So I didn’t want to just create more food porn.”

Or create more food anxiety. Abboud admits he didn’t have much experience cooking Lebanese food when he first opened his restaurant – “fat chance of Mum letting me in the kitchen; she still warns me to be careful with a knife” – so he gets it if you’re nervous too.

“I’m supposed to be a professional, but I wanted people to know that it’s not that easy if you’re not that way inclined,” he says. “I normally get it so wrong the first time. The first trial night we had with Rumi, I had a complete meltdown. I said to my wife, ‘Why did you let me get this far without telling me that the food isn’t that good?’ She said, ‘What are you talking about?’ But it was so far from what I wanted because I needed to practise.”

When Rumi first opened, few restaurants were cooking on charcoal, serving Arabic coffee or pushing share plates. In the book, Abboud recalls the lengths his team went to trying to explain the concept. “At one point we resorted to likening the experience to dining at a Chinese restaurant, hoping to give some comfort to the guests who were concerned about missing out,” he writes.

“None of it was done to make a point,” he says now, “because never did I imagine there would be any flow-on from it. It was just the way I wanted to serve food, and it’s the way that I still like to eat.”

Lately he’s noticed big antipasto plates are coming back in fashion.

“I hate those things! It’s just a strange way to eat. It almost takes away the communal aspect of eating and there’s always filler. No one ever ate those grilled eggplants! The whole ethos of our food was to break that all apart.”

With Rumi going great guns, Abboud spread his wings, opening Moor’s Head (which served “inauthentic” pizza – noticing a theme here?) on the Glen Huntly Road strip and Bar Saracen in the CBD. He sold the former in 2015 and closed the latter amid the lockdowns in 2021.

“I was always trying to draw attention to the Moor’s Head, but people just wanted to talk about Rumi. I think Rumi really struck a chord in people’s hearts at a certain time and, fortunately for us, it stayed that way,” he says.

“A big part was luck. We managed to embed ourselves in the community at a time when if you cooked well, if you looked after people, that gave you respect. Since then the industry has moved and the standard is so high it’s almost coming full circle back to the ’90s, when restaurants were entertainment and it wasn’t about eating good-quality stuff.”

Abboud gives Broadsheet a tour around his home in Coburg, in Melbourne's north, where he lives with his wife Natalie and their three boys. There’s a decent vegetable patch out back, unsurprisingly.

“I’d love to romanticise our relationship with the garden, but it’s just a very practical set-up,” he says. “I get out there when I can because it’s almost the only thing I do that isn’t business-related.”

Now is a particularly hectic time, because the release of the book coincides with a new era for the restaurant (the front cover will even be the new logo), which is moving from its long-time home on Lygon Street to East Brunswick Village. There’ll also be a separate bar serving Lebanese sandwiches and other snacks. Neighbours will include Siconi Gelato, Blackhearts & Sparrows and Bridge Road Brewers.

Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school early.

“I told my parents that I had an apprenticeship, which I didn’t – it was just a dishwashing job and this guy wasn’t even paying us,” Abboud recalls. “I rocked up one day and there’s chains on the door because he hasn’t been paying his rent. Welcome to hospitality!”

Despite that insalubrious start, he’s always been mesmerised by the way the industry provides peaks and troughs that most people will never experience.

“I’ve come to realise that hospitality is one of the few jobs that gives you joy, whether it’s a great interaction with a customer or another staff member. With hospitality, you either get it or you don’t. If you don’t, and you stay in it, you’re always fighting it.”

Over the years, Abboud’s siblings, cousins, parents and in-laws have all rolled up their sleeves for the business, and during the lockdowns his three sons did too, helping with takeaway preparations.

“The 15-year-old now comes in on a regular basis,” Abboud says. “The next one along is pretty reluctant, but he’ll realise very soon that he has expensive tastes and if he wants to buy anything … Then the little guy is 12 and he’s pretty keen. Look, I don’t expect them to be heavily involved, but I also don’t have this thing … I know a lot of people think, ‘Don’t ever let them get involved in hospitality, it’s horrible.’ But it’s given me great opportunities without even finishing high school.”

And what of his mother, Malaky? Has she cast her approval on the recipes in the book?

“She flicked through for about one second and looked to the heavens to thank god for what has been achieved, and that was about the end of it,” he laughs. “She’s very proud of it – she shows her friends photos of it – but, you know, Mum’s high on emotion, low on detail.”

Joseph Abboud’s cookbook Rumi: Food of Middle Eastern Appearance is out now through Murdoch Books.

This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.

Want to learn how to make Abboud’s creamy tahini chicken? Head here for the recipe.

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