Long before Lebanese sweets filled shopfronts across Australia, there was a busy Redfern corner shop where a family of new arrivals taught the nation to love baklawa (baklava).
In December 1970, just six months after arriving in Sydney, pastry chef Rateb Elmowy and his son Abdullah (known as Albert) opened Elmowy & Sons, the first Lebanese sweet shop in Australia.
Inside, trays gleamed with baklawa filled with cashews and pine nuts, ma’amoul dusted in sugar, and halawat al jibn, a sweet cheese made from melted mozzarella, semolina, sugar and rosewater.
Rateb was my grandfather and, although I was only a year old when he passed away and the business closed soon after, I was raised on stories of the family sweet shop and his legacy was an important part of my childhood.
“We were flat out within a few months,” recalled my uncle Gassan Elmowy, who grew up inside the shop on the corner of Cooper and Walker streets.
“When we first opened, we were working practically 20 hours a day.
“The shop would close about midnight, but during public holidays, Christmas or New Year, it would be open until two or three in the morning.”
Rateb migrated to Australia with his eight children, building a family run business where everyone played a part.
We used to order a tonne of flour and a tonne of sugar every couple of weeks. You’d put a tray of sweets outside, and it only lasted 10 or 15 minutes.
Gassan Elmowy
Some cooked and wrapped sweets, while others served customers or built the boxes used to pack sweets. Trained in Tripoli by his uncle, Rateb brought with him generations of skill.
“We had two rooms to operate in, one with the ovens and the other with the ashta (milk curd) and the table where we made the filo pastry,” he said.
“Every evening after cooking and cleaning, the four of us [brothers] would sit inside that small back room smashing and mixing cashews, walnuts and dates, with a machine we turned by hand. We were doing roughly 20 or 30 kilos of nuts a night.”
The demand never slowed.
“We used to order a tonne of flour and a tonne of sugar every couple of weeks,” Gassan said. “You’d put a tray of sweets outside, and it only lasted 10 or 15 minutes.”
But the shop’s reach went far beyond Redfern and supplied restaurants and grocers across Sydney. Its baklawa and ma’amoul was shipped around the country, packed in boxes and sent by train.
“Every week we’d send 10 kilos of cakes to restaurants in Surfers Paradise and Brisbane,” Gassan added. “We had customers from Melbourne, Adelaide, all over”.
Elmowy & Sons supplied about 40 shops across the country and was profiled twice in The Sydney Morning Herald as “a quiet little corner of Lebanon in Redfern”.
A 2000 Sydney Morning Herald article featuring Elmowy & Sons. Supplied.
“We were approached by newspapers, journalists, even pastry chefs,” said my aunt Nada Elmowy, Rateb’s eldest daughter.
“People wanted to write about us and the interest never faded. We were approached about seven years ago to film a documentary on our family.”
For many, Elmowy & Sons was as much a meeting place as a business.
“It really meant a lot for a lot of people,” Gassan said. “People used to come in not only for the sweets but to sit down with my dad, to talk, to have a bit of a conversation with him, they loved the atmosphere.”
The eldest, Ahmad (known as Alan) became known for singing as he served customers, offering them samples of sweets, a touch that filled the shop with warmth.
“We really catered for everyone; Lebanese, Australians, all nationalities,” said Nada. “People travelled from far away because it wasn’t just the only sweet shop at the time, it was the nicest.
“You ask anyone who is Lebanese and they’d know the name Elmowy.”
She said my family’s insistence on freshness and quality set them apart.
“That was our trademark, our products were always fresh, Nada added. “Even when other stores opened later, people still bought from us because my father’s sweets were the nicest in Australia.”
Rateb Elmowy’s daughter teaches her niece how to make baklawa. Photograph: Nadia Elkaid
The shop never expanded beyond Redfern, by choice.
“It was the only shop we opened, because my father was content and wanted to keep it within the family,” Nada said. “And for that one shop, it made a big blast.”
For 36 years, my family ran the business without a pause, seven days a week. Over the years, customers came to see the shop as a landmark. When it closed in 2006, the calls didn’t stop.
“For more than 10 years people kept asking if we’d opened somewhere else, or when we were going to reopen,” Gassan said.
“Even now, they still ask if I can make sweets for them at home.”
One admirer later wrote that “no Lebanese patisserie in Sydney today compares to the quality of Elmowy. Its sweets were the stuff of Phoenician legends”.
Though the shop has long closed, its legacy lingers, in the aroma of rosewater that still drifts from Sydney’s many patisseries, and in the story of a family whose hard work and hospitality helped shape Australia’s multicultural palate.
It lives on in the memories of those who knew the Elmowy family, and through my family itself, which now spans four generations in Australia.
“People still recognise us,” said Nada. “It’s not only the ’70s generation, even their kids. They’ll stop us and say, ‘my dad used to talk about your dad and the sweet shop’.”
Main photo supplied.
