“Most people don’t know this, but I was a professional footballer when I was younger, playing with the national team for seven years. I think it’s important to show that I did not fit the norms of what a woman should do or how our profession should shape up,” says Bahraini chef Tala Bashmi.
Tala, who had to discontinue professional football due to injuries, says it was while she was in her 20s that she began to explore “what I truly wanted to do.”
Tala was recently in the city as a guest of The Chambers at the Taj West End where she curated a sit-down dinner that showcased her culinary heritage.
“As with a lot of women, cooking is my love language — it’s how I show people I care about them. Seeing the joy on the faces of my family and friends every time I fed them something they enjoyed made me happy, made me feel fulfilled.“
In order to make a career out of her passion, Tala began a home-based baking business in 2010. “For a year and a half, I handled every aspect of this business — from marketing and purchases to baking and delivery. That’s where I learnt the basics of the industry in terms of costing, overheads and other factors most people may not know about when they decide to start a cafe or restaurant.”
Fiercely competitive by nature, Tala says she wanted to be the best at whatever she did, so she decided to join the Gulf Hotels for formal training and hands-on experience as a chef. “That was in 2014. I joined as a trainee and I started from the ground up, working in the butchery and other sections for long hours.”
“For the first two years. I wasn’t allowed to cook a single complete dish; I was only prepping. I think that it’s invaluable and all young chefs need to go through it. You have to do the grunt work and endless hours of mindless preparation. Being a chef is not about working in a fine dining restaurant and plating with tweezers.”
“It takes a long time to get there and we shouldn’t skip these steps,” says Tala, who later moved to Switzerland to pursue a culinary degree. “I was there for two years, working and studying at Michelin-starred restaurants and it was the most challenging experience of my life, until I opened my restaurant and that brought several other challenges,” she says with a laugh.
“Switzerland had a different kitchen culture. It was run by chefs with an old school mentality where they try to break your spirit and put you down. A small example — the kitchen I worked in for six months, the chef didn’t deign to learn my name; he just addressed me as ‘woman’.”
“You work 18 hours a day and shouldn’t complain because everybody else is doing it too. As a woman, you have to prove yourself in this industry by working twice as hard. In the kitchen, it’s not only your mental strength and emotional intelligence, your physical strength matters too.”
Despite the challenges of living abroad, not speaking the language and working in a tough, male-dominated industry, Tala says there were also chefs who were amazing mentors too.
Payday and then some
“I returned to Bahrain and began working at Fusions, eventually becoming sous chef in 2017. The management gave me the opportunity to take over the restaurant which was little more than a galley kitchen,” says Tala, adding, ”It was just another hand and me, since the other person quit — he didn’t want to call me chef or work under me.”
Still, Tala proved she was made of sterner stuff. “Within a year, the restaurant went from doing about two covers a day, to 30 covers daily with just the two of us. With almost no marketing, we were able to increase the profit percentage by over 1,000% and the management allowed us to renovate the space.”
“I got to have a bigger kitchen, change the layout, and create my own concept menu with my vision for the restaurant. We reopened in 2020 officially as Fusions by Tala, right before the pandemic hit.”
And if this wasn’t enough, Tala was participating on Top Chef Middle East at the time her restaurant was opening. “I made it to the finals and when you’re on the show, you have no access to your phone or emails — you get a 10-minute phone call once in three days. I kept calling my team for updates on our restaurant opening.”
Tala says winning the World’s Best Female Chef Middle East North Africa (MENA) award in 2022 was an amazing turning point. “After all the hard work, it felt really good to be acknowledged.“
And that’s not all. From entering the list in 39th place, Fusions by Tala now holds the No.3 spot. “It’s an unbelievable feat and all the credit goes to my team.”
“Though Bahrain has always been open minded in comparison to other nations in the Persian Gulf, there wasn’t always this respect for what we do as chefs. You were considered a lowly cook; there was no prestige to our craft. Television and shows such as Top Chef broke that boundary.”
“I would say the biggest struggle is changing the mentality that this field is much more than just cooking — it’s an art, a way of thinking, it’s philosophy. I have faced hurdles in my region and in Europe as a chef and as a female, but they were very different.”
Hello India!
For the sit-down dinner at Chambers, Tala sought to curate a meal that would be both fresh on the palate and yet, not entirely unfamiliar.
“Saloona (a stew or curry) bridges the gap between the cuisines of both our countries. Since Bahrain was a huge trading hub, spices would come from India and we’d manipulate it to fit our cuisine.“
“Though saloona can be prepared using any kind of meat, we use seafood at home as it is our main protein. This is a dish my father would make every Friday for lunch and its one of my favourites.”
“The recipe for burraniya (a dish of lamb, charred eggplant and mint) is from a mediaeval Arabic cookbook that is over a 1000 years old. It originated in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and was a dish the sultan’s wife would cook for him. For me, this shows Arabic cuisine at its purest form before external influences.”
Tala, who used atraf al-tib, a 1000-year-old spice mix while preparing the burraniya, says it was “absolutely challenging” to come up with vegetarian versions for the menu since it is not a common option in the Middle East. “For Arabs, eating vegetables meant you couldn’t afford meat; however, that is slowly changing now and there are people who look for a vegetarian experience.”
For vegetarian options, Tala used butternut squash and vegan caviar in the saloona, and eggplant and truffles in the burraniya.
As it was her first trip to the country, Tala did give Indian food a try. “I know food here is regional, micro-regional even so have barely scratched the surface of cuisine here. I enjoyed dum chicken and almost every dish I’ve tried here has inspired me as the flavours are so tangy and fresh.”
“We use tamarind and turmeric in Bahraini cuisine too, but here it is a flavour explosion,” she says.
“I’m blessed to be able to not only share my cuisine and culture wherever I go, but also learn something new of the cuisine of people I meet on my travels. I carry that with me and it fits into my my new expanded dictionary of the world.”
