Emad Zalloum, the Sambusek restaurant head chef at Rosewood Hotel Abu Dhabi, helps cook iftar for hundreds of guests at the hotel every day during Ramadan. The 40-year-old from Lebanon, who is a Christian, has been in the UAE for 12 years and says he has learnt from some of the best Arabic cooks at various hotels in the country. Here he reveals a typical working day during the holy month.
8am
I wake up and usually drink coffee watching the TV. I don’t have breakfast. My family is back home in south Lebanon for the summer, and I will be joining them next week. I am from a town in south Lebanon called Hasbaya. My accommodation is around seven minutes from the hotel, and I am there by 9am.
10am
I check the orders for the day, and follow the menu. I cook iftar buffets every day for the Sambusek restaurant, for the ballroom, iftar tent and also cook for suhour, which we serve from 10pm until 1am at the tent. We have around 450 people every day for iftar [on average]. I have a team of 18 people, and they come from Lebanon, Jordan, India and the Philippines. We have six sets of menu for the iftar. We have one cycle for three days and rotate it. Each menu has 15 items for cold mezze, 15 hot mezze such as sambusek and kibbeh, and eight main courses besides 25 kinds of desserts – not only Arabic but also eastern and Iranian desserts such as kunafa and ice-cream. My speciality is the ouzi, it’s very special during Ramadan, and the shawarma station. Ouzi is a whole lamb marinated with Arabic spices and cooked in the oven for three-and-a-half hours. It is served with oriental rice with onion, meat, Arabic spices and American rice. Most of our guests are Arabic and they love American rice. At the same time we have two more rice dishes, such as biryani and Iranian rice.
1pm
As a chef, I sometimes do not have lunch because when you start cooking, you feel you cannot eat any more. I taste most of the food, and my menus are huge. Sometimes when I have lunch during Ramadan I have some rice and chicken or lamb besides a soup in the beginning and fattoush salad; it depends on what I can find.
2pm
We start cooking and depending on the number of guests, it can go on until 5:30pm. After that I go around checking the food. Some of the guys have worked with me for 10 years and if anyone missed anything or needs any help, I am here at the kitchen for 12 hours. At around 3pm, it’s the rush time because we have to finish cooking. We need half an hour to serve all the food. I supervise the cooking and check the stands.
7pm
We serve iftar, running the buffet, refilling it and preparing again. [One day last week] we cooked 110 kilograms of rice. In our team, four of our chefs are fasting and they break their fast at the right time. Whoever is not fasting covers the buffet at that time.
9pm
We close the iftar buffet and it’s time to clean the place. For the next couple of hours, we prepare our menu for the next day. Sometimes I stay back late and have some bites for dinner, some desserts or salad.
11pm
Back at home I take a shower, watch TV and drink Moroccan tea. And I sleep by 1am. I have been in this profession for 20 years. I started my career in Lebanon with my own restaurant. I left my country because it is very limited [there] and I wanted more experience. Since I came here, I’ve worked with some of the best hotels in the UAE and some of the best Arabic chefs who have helped me grow in my career. I worked in Dubai for 10 years, working for the Grand Hyatt, Le Méridien Airport and Burj Al Arab among others. And I came to Abu Dhabi two years ago for the pre-opening of Rosewood. I also teach Arabic cooking as part of my job at Rosewood. You need to love your job, especially cooking.
ssahoo@thenational.ae
Follow The National's Business section on Twitter
