Street Food Stories: JUMA Kitchen

Transcript

00:00My name is Philip Juma. I'm the founder of Juma Kitchen in Borough Market. I've been

00:10celebrating Iraqi cuisine for the last 11 years in London. We serve traditional Iraqi food,

00:19in particular specialising Iraqi kubba. They're like handcrafted beautiful morsels,

00:25dumplings, croquettes, whatever you want to call them. They're a labour of love. There's a lot of

00:30integrity to making them by hand. Very specialised, but we hopefully do do it proud. And we also have

00:37kebabs and we have our signature one and only dessert, our knalfa. So I'm a born Londoner. My

00:47dad's Iraqi, my mum's English-Irish. Growing up it was mainly like Western food in my house and more

00:54kind of like the boring stuff. But now and again there'd be a special occasion where my dad, my

00:58aunties would just pull out an amazing banquet, dinner parties, and that's where I got to try

01:04the real authentic food from Iraq. And I've been hooked ever since. It's just such a rich and

01:10incredible cuisine that people know little about and I'm on a mission to change that.

01:18I'm a self-taught chef. I was like in finance for my sins for many years after uni. Then I kind of

01:23worked and got experience in different kitchens and restaurants across London and obviously

01:28learned dishes off my dad, off my aunties. It's been like a real journey of self-discovery,

01:33learning about Iraqi cuisine from nothing really. There's not really many cookbooks out there.

01:39There's not many, many restaurants and chefs that I could have just gone in and learned from. So

01:44yeah, it's been an amazing journey and I'm learning all the time. Like the cuisine is very vast and I love it.

01:50Best seller is the Qubba Taleb. Out of all the Qubba's, the Haleb is our best seller. Probably the most

01:57authentic one with beef, lamb, onion and spices in and our signature amber sauce. And our mixed grill,

02:04our mixed kebab is a banger.

02:09It means the world to me to serve Iraqi food in a place like Borough Market. It's like a melting pot of

02:14just cultures, tourism from all over the world and for people to see it and experience it mostly for

02:20the first time. And for me to be facilitating that and being that bridge to like introduce them to a

02:25cuisine that, let's be honest, as a country has been shrouded in negativity for the past 40 years,

02:33it's nice to bring a new, let's say dimension and image to a lesser known culture.

02:41For the old school Iraqis, the connotations and the negativity with the word Iraq was

02:47was rife, especially as America and Britain invaded. So they felt that they didn't feel it was safe to

02:55use it. But for me growing up, I just, I was so proud of like the cuisine and our upbringing and the

03:01communities that I was part of that I just thought, no, let's, let's, let's shout this loud and proud.

03:06One day I'd like to open a restaurant. I think, I think the people want it,

03:10everyone wants it apart from me because it is just so stressful hospitality right now,

03:14but I, um, I think it will be inevitable.