The popular Knafeh Bakery and bearded baker brothers Ameer and Joey El-Issa are coming down to Macarthur Square Campbelltown for south west Sydney TAFE’s Open Week this Thursday, January 19 – and they have a story to tell.
Open week started today at Macarthur Square, but the bearded baker brothers are set to be the hit of the program.
Joining TAFE NSW’s “be ambitious’’ campaign, the brothers are offering onlookers a chance to see real skills and ambition in action.
“I’m looking forward to having knafeh out there working with TAFE SWSi,” Ameer said.
“If we can be a part of inspiring the next generation, that’s a reward that money just can’t buy.
“When people see us in action and realise that we actually started at TAFE, it will show them that TAFE is a great place to start their career and there are opportunities are out there.
“We are a working model that people can relate to; we’re not just Knafeh, we’re the design, the hospitality, the business model, marketing etc – there’s so many courses at TAFE that build all these skills.”
While he left the classrooms at TAFE NSW a long time ago, Ameer maintains the architectural design skills he developed while at TAFE helped create his Knafeh success story.
“It all started with a shipping container – I’d seen examples of shipping containers used for interior spaces during my studies and I’d had this idea of food service from a shipping container and it was always something I wanted to do,’’ Ameer said.
“Our Knafeh bakery business has really been a marriage of my two great passions and skills – architecture and hospitality.
“I’ve had people say I must have been crazy to leave my successful architectural job in Sydney; but I was always using my creativity and design skills, re-designing the restaurant, menu planning and coming up with new ideas. I just began using those skills in a different way.”
The two worlds of design and hospitality collided for Ameer and his brother when the demand for their mum’s Knafeh recipe at their family restaurant in Croydon Park began to sky-rocket.
Knafeh is a Middle Eastern sweet cheese or cream dessert, topped with pistachios and drizzled with sugar syrup. It varies from region to region in the kinds of cheese or cream used.
Ameer took their delicious family recipe and family values, added a great interior space, threw in some dancing and excitement and one tasty food craze was born.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]“We tweaked mum’s recipe to become a lighter, creamier interpretation of the traditional desert – and people just couldn’t get enough of it,” he said.[/social_quote]
“At the restaurant we couldn’t actually meet the demand for how popular it had become so we needed to do something and come up with a solution.
“Before I knew it I was by myself, buying a shipping container. I came home and told my mother, sister and brother what I had done and they thought I was crazy – but I told them to relax.
“I’d had an idea.”
