The Chefs Behind Sahtein

Sahtein’s menu began with a week in Beirut.

Before the restaurant opened, Hunter Street Hospitality Culinary Director Santiago Aristizabal and CEO Frank Tucker ate across the city, from neighbourhood restaurants to fine dining rooms.

The trip was not simply about bringing home recipes. They watched how Beirut’s restaurants structure a meal: how people order, how dishes are shared and when each plate reaches the table.

What came back was a way of running the room.

What Beirut changed

At Sahtein, dishes leave the kitchen when they are ready rather than arriving in formal courses. Cold mezze, the small dishes that begin the meal, stay on the table as hot plates and grilled meats join them.

The Grand Banquet follows the same rhythm. Saj bread and cold mezze arrive first, followed by dishes from the charcoal grill and a table of Lebanese desserts.

The meal overlaps because that is how the team saw Beirut eat.

Tested in Sydney

Before opening, the menu was shared with members of Sydney’s Lebanese community.

The test was familiarity rather than novelty. The tabbouleh needed to put parsley first, the hummus needed the right smoothness and the bread needed to taste as though it belonged on a Lebanese table.

Those conversations helped shape a menu grounded in the food people know from home.

The chefs at the pass

Executive Chef Mike Flood came to Sahtein after working at Felix, Firedoor and Quay in Sydney, as well as Petrus and Maze by Gordon Ramsay in London.

His experience at Firedoor is particularly relevant to a kitchen built around woodfire and charcoal.

Alongside him, Head Chef Rifat Katranci brings experience from Jimmy’s Falafel and The Cut Bar & Grill. His background spans both Lebanese cooking and a kitchen devoted to the grill.

Together, they turn the lessons of Beirut into the daily work of the Sahtein kitchen.

What you can see from the table

Thin Lebanese flatbread is stretched by hand and baked over a metal dome. The half-chicken is deboned by hand before it goes over the coals. White Pyrenees lamb shoulder cooks for eleven hours before being finished over woodfire.

Everything is prepared with halal produce, and every dish reaches the table when it is ready.

See what the chefs brought back from Beirut. Reserve your table at Sahtein via link above.

Sahtein practises the responsible service of alcohol. Drink responsibly.