Every morning for the last four months, 25-year-old Hassan Alzamely has been learning how to make a falafel mix that has been in his family for more than 40 years, just as his father, Salim, remembers it from the streets of Iraq.
“He never had faith that it would be a big deal, but everyone loved it,” Hassan said. “I knew we had to do something with it.”
So he started Feast Classics in Logan Central, which he hopes will be his first of many restaurants that turn his family’s secret recipe into a household name in contemporary Middle Eastern cuisine.
They have only been open for several months, but already Feast Classics at 41 Station Road claim to have the freshest and most authentic falafels in the state.
Every weekend, regulars visit from the Gold Coast and Toowoomba just for the falafels.
“The second you have a look at the falafel, there is an instant difference in the look and density of it,” owner Hassan said.
Made fresh to order, their falafels differ to others on store shelves, which are frozen and mass produced, he said.
“We’re trying to bring back the essence of the falafel,” he said. “It’s kind of lost with all the massive kebab companies.”
How Hassan got to this point is surprising to even himself. Last year, he worked full time for an optometrist and before that, a butcher.
He got the idea after seeing his father, Salim, cook falafels weekly for a local mosque for the last 10 years.
“The mosque was purchasing falafels from the big companies, but it was too expensive, so dad called up a few of his brothers and uncles in Iraq and Iran, got a local recipe, then brought it here,” Hassan said.
Salim then started tinkering with the recipe to suit local ingredients and overcome differences in the types of chickpeas and flour available in Australia, which alters how everything blends.
Hassan’s uncle recently asked if they wanted to start a shop.
“Dad then came up to me, asked me what I thought of my uncle’s idea of starting a shop, and I thought it was a great idea,” Hassan said.
While Hassan manages the shop, his mother and sister collect and buy the produce and Salim gets in early every day to make the falafel mix.
They have had a lot to contend with due to the latest Omicron wave. However, Hassan is most worried about perfecting his father’s method while Salim can still manage the workload, given he is battling a heart condition.
“If he one day Dad cannot come to work, it’s going to come to a standstill,” Hassan said.
“It’s just an extremely sensitive cooking process, and dad is the type of person who doesn’t follow a recipe – he’ll just figure it out as he goes – so if you ask him how much of something to put in, he couldn’t tell you.”
Despite this, there have been some promising signs – enough to keep Hassan excited about the future.
“We now have people coming from Toowoomba and the Gold Coast and enquiries online, it’s very encouraging, to the point that we want to expand,” he said.
Hassan hopes to soon open falafel stores in Brisbane and other locations throughout Queensland to create a legacy for his father’s cooking.
Feast Classics is one of 15 eateries, restaurants, and grocers from six cultures, within a 200 sqm shopping precinct along Station Rd dubbed “the Golden Circle”.
The City of Logan describes it as “the most culturally diverse concentrations” of food in the city.
