"Look, the moral of the story is that Sydney's fucked. Honestly there's too much good food."
Jean-Paul has a restless energy when he talks about the city's food scene. The self-appointed "Director of Flavour" at Marrickville's Baba's Place verges on melancholic in the knowledge that while there's always more food to taste in Sydney, there isn't nearly enough time to try it all.
Look, the moral of the story is that Sydney's fucked. Honestly there's too much good food
Our conversation dips and dives into all kinds of tangents as he racks his brain to recall the best food he's had, "a lot of things blow my mind, but I forget, it's a problem I've got." He rattles off a directory of Sydney favourites that don't make the final cut for his list of the ultimate day eating in Sydney, with honourable mentions to 10 William Street's tiramisu, Hubert's pepper mushroom, El Khayal's meat hummus, Tany's miso eggplant, and Sixpenny's Murray cod. But in the end, he agrees to stop adding more to the meal, a moment of clarity: "I've really just derailed this structure, hey?"
Jean-Paul was an engineer before opening up Baba's Place a year ago, but he always loved cooking and, critically, the Food Channel.
a lot of things blow my mind, but I forget, it's a problem I've got
"The only drawback I have with Chef's Table is there's not enough food," he complains. "There's a lot of talking heads, not much information, not much cooking, not much insight. It's just pretty much: ‘I'm here, I’m amazing, let's go.’"
After a few successful pop-ups, he found a permanent space in a red brick warehouse down an unassuming side-street between a poultry supplier and a plastics manufacturer. He admits he's got a chip on his shoulder because he's not a classically trained chef, so he always wants everything he does to be a bit different. Ultimately, the menu he designed is a miscellany of dishes reflecting the Sydney suburbia that he and his Baba co-owners grew up in, with nods to their diverse heritage across Lebanon, Macedonia and Greece.
I'll have to come back for another meal here. "Yeah, fucking oath. I'll be here working. Like an idiot."
