Daily Archives: March 21, 2011

John’s Nuts & Deli

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Shop 30, Metro West Shopping Centre, cnr Paisley and Albert Sts, Footscray. Phone 0419 138 992.

For some reason I’ve always had Johns Nuts & Deli pegged as just another continental deli, the kind found in various other Footscray venues, in Sunshine, Carlton, Brunswick – and even in Chapel St.

The kind of delis that were a signpost of an earlier wave of migration to Australia, from Italy, Greece and continental Europe.

Well, in this case I simply hadn’t been looking hard enough. Or rather, my eyes didn’t see what wasn’t there.

Yes, there are many, many staples of your standard Melbourne-style deli – tinned tomatoes, jars of many different kinds of pickled vegetables, jams, wafer biscuits, a big range of dried fruit and nuts, stacks of sacked rice and beans and other pulses and much more.

What there is not, however, is meat in general and the many byproducts of pork in particular.

Owner George Sallama tells me his parents come from Jordan and Lebanon and that the family has run this business for 16 years.

And that Middle Eastern heritage no doubt explains a change I have been noticing at Johns – in a way that reflects the immediate changing community, the clientele is taking on a pronounced African slant.

For George, this is just simply doing smart business.

He tells me his African customers know where to head in his store for products and ingredients specific to their cooking and other needs.

These include the likes of sorghum and white cornflour for making injera.


But this new wave of customers also buys the same rice and beans and more as his other customers; they just use them differently, as we all know to our grand benefit!

Another speciality African item George stocks are what he calls mafraka.

These look like rudimentary walking sticks for persons of diminutive stature.

Wrong!

They’re actually a form hand-held beater used to help the cooking process of molokhia, the spinach-like dish found at many nearby African eateries.

George demonstrates by placing a mafraka between his hands, with the beater end downwards, and then briskly rubbing his hands together.

So simple!

My needs at Johns on this outing are simple – roasted almonds, dried apricots and white sultanas.

I include a couple of pieces of juicy baklava as an afterthought.

John’s Nuts & Deli is a living, breathing mirror to the changing face of Footscray.

Harmony Feast

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Maidstone Community Centre, 21 Yardley St, Maidstone. Phone: 9317 0747

This free event at the Maidstone Community Centre ticks so many excellent boxes for me I am entertaining visions of hordes of hungry, happy locals descending on Yardley St to graze hungrily among many dozens of food stalls.

So I am somewhat bemused to find the feast is considerably more low key than that, though no less enjoyable than expected – far from it.

The food serving is spread throughout several of the centre’s rooms and out the in the beaut back yard.

If the crowd is less populous and frenzied than I’d imagined, it is certainly a happy one, its members ranging as far and wide in size and age as they do in their dizzying array of skin colours.

And I expect many of them are just like me and enjoy a bash in which the term “multicultural” is one to be embraced and celebrated.

How did multicultural come to be such a dirty word with such negative connotations in Australia?

Rhetorical question folks! We all know their names.

Anyway, this lovely party is a poke in the eye for them – and especially those who of late have been making preposterous comparisons between Australia and the vastly different situations in, say, Germany, France and Scandanavia.

Oubt, you damn dog whistlers!


At each serving table there are neat stacks of a complementary cookbooks containing all the days recipes – very cool, eh?

I start with vegetable alicha and ye misir wot – a simple Ethiopian vegetable stew and a very dry lentil dish, both served with dark brown injera. Even before venturing elsewhere I return for a second serve!

Outside, I score a nice long snag on a slice of white bread, topped with South American roast tomato salsa. Ethiopian zilzil and satay sauce round out the topping choices.

In the centre’s kitchen, I obtain a homely and hearty bowl of polenta, white bean stew, basic short pasta in tomato sauce and a single meatball.

Outside again, I enjoy herb paste pizza that emanates from the wood-fired oven –  basic thin flat bread smeared with an oily, herby paste.

Seeing a range of drinks being dispensed in small cardboard cups that make the process look like mass medication, I jokingly ask if they have multicultural LSD before knocking back a couple of homemade lemonades.


Of the savoury dishes on hand, I miss only the rice paper rolls and tandoori chook. There are queues for both.

I pass by the lemonade scones and head for the Filipino buco pandan, a slithery, sexy, extremely green mix of grass jelly, condensed milk, cream, coconut, tapioca pearls and more.

The speechifying is kept to a minimum and every soul in the pace is having a fine old time as Ray Pereira gets a willing group of volunteers together for an African drumming session.

I believe this is the second Harmony Feast to be held at the centre, and I’ll be sure to make a point of attending the third.