Tell us a little about yourself!
Zunaid: I’m originally from Cape Town, South Africa, and I actually only relocated to Pitlochry last month, so I am definitely still one of the new faces in the theatre! Before moving here, I spent nine months working in Guernsey as a sous chef, and prior to that I was based in Saint Helena Island, where I spent seven years working as a chef as well, which is also where I met my wife and we had our kids.
How do you go about designing a new menu?
Zunaid: It took me about two weeks to design the Light Lunch Menu – it takes a while, and it’s not something that you’re going to do in five minutes. You got to do your research first. You’ve got to check your suppliers in the area and check if you are able to source the ingredients. If not, you have to find substitutes for the ingredients to make it workable. Having spent seven years in St. Helena where you can be kind of limited with supplies, it taught me that if you don’t have something, you find a substitute for it or you make your own version of it.
What has inspired some of the new dishes on the menu?
Zunaid: If you look at the menu, you’ll see a lot of the items inspired by street food – you’ve got your tacos, your crispy calamari, and your bao buns. I tend to steer into Asian cuisine quite a lot, and it’s definitely my favourite, so you may even see things like ramen appearing as a special.
To be honest, when I walk to work in the morning, that’s when I get quite creative. Walking along the banks of the River Tummel, and over the bridge somehow just gets the creative juices flowing. When I get to work, I just try what I want to try, and see where that takes me.
What is your favourite dish on the new menu?
Zunaid: The star of the show has to be the chicken bao buns – a steamed Asian bun filled with juicy barbecue chicken and freshly made kimchi, which we do in-house. I had a lot of fun coming up with the bao buns, I started with a base, the bao bun, and then you take a whole lot of different flavours, with pork, with beef, etc. and you see whatever works. Regardless of the filling, kimchi is definitely something that, in my opinion, needs to be included in a bao bun.
What other dishes might we see on the menu?
Zunaid: The chicken and bacon wrap is delicious! Chicken and bacon is a match made in heaven – you’ve got the smokiness of the bacon pairing nicely with the chicken, then the creaminess of the mayo pulling it all together. It seems so simple, but it’s actually really nice all together.
Sitting alongside the riverside, having a plate of crispy fried calamari or a fresh cod taco, it makes you feel like you’re on holiday as the view is just impeccable, so I want to have a menu that transports you away.
How much do you consider the presentation of your dishes?
Zunaid: You eat with your eyes; if something looks good, you’re going to want to eat it. So I try to make my food as appealing as possible for everyone.
My dishes are always quite colorful, because I feel that brings positive energy and light into the dishes. If you notice, edible flowers are everywhere in my dishes, I really like using edible flowers. I’m at my happiest when I have edible flowers and micro herbs.
Our brand-new light lunch menu is available from today in our café.