Find Palestinian Comfort Food at Huda's Kitchen Rules
By day, Kin in Caroline Springs is a cafe serving lattes, avo toast and loaded croissants. But by night, Huda Bardawil takes over the kitchen, brings her Palestinian heritage to the forefront and transforms the venue into Huda’s Kitchen Rules.
Bardawil was raised in Qatar, but her roots trace back to Palestine, which her family fled in the Naksa following the Six-Day War in 1967. When Bardawil moved to Australia around a decade ago, food became a way for her to preserve and share her traditions. Formerly a pharmacist, she started cooking while at home with her three young children, calling her mother, aunts and grandmother to master the kitchen techniques she had seen them use as a child.
She launched a catering business from home in 2018, hosted sell-out cooking classes with Free to Feed, and, early last year, began taking over the kitchen at Kin in the evenings.
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Her Huda’s Kitchen Rules menu is a celebration of the food she grew up eating. Maqluba – a dish with layers of rice, fried eggplant, potato and onion, flipped upside-down to reveal a golden top – is a staple. So is msakhan, house-made flatbread topped with confit onions, sumac and chicken.
Initially, Bardawil says the restaurant was about maintaining customs within her inner circle. “It was a challenge with my small family to keep the traditions in such a multicultural, big community here in Australia,” she says. But it’s become more than that. “I’m not only serving Palestinian food, but also showing people that Palestinians can melt into other communities.”
There are dishes that blend Palestinian flavours with global influences like falafel nachos (chips topped with falafel mix and served with hummus) and msakhan-inspired spring rolls drizzled with pomegranate molasses.
“I want to create a place where everyone can experience Palestine in a bite of food,” Bardawil says. “It’s about building connections between all of us – not just Palestinians.”
Drinks include coffee, karak chai (spiced black tea with evaporated milk), hibiscus tea and Australian-owned Salaam Cola. But the most special, according to Bardawil, is barrad, a lemon slushie that’s a Gazan summer staple. “A seller will go around with an icebox filled with slushies and everyone will run to the streets with one coin to enjoy the drink,” she says.
For dessert, Bardawil makes classic knafeh – a sweet and salty number made by layering white brined cheese and shredded filo or kataifi pastry. “I serve it the way we learn it in our homes,” she says. “Mums do it in a very simple way. They have [the dough] prepared already and just apply some cheese, some sugar syrup and love.”
1-7, Shop 4 Caroline Springs Boulevard, Caroline Springs
0431841322
Mon; Thu to Sat 5.30pm–9.30pm
Sun 5.30pm–9pm
