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Meet Ayla’s Cafe: Adelaide’s hidden Persian gem

Meet the family behind Persian cafe, Ayla’s. Ayla’s is home to Iranian slow-cooked lamb, stuffed eggplant, homemade pistachio kataifi and more.

Coffee is a subject dear to a lot of hearts in Adelaide (remember, Adelaide drove Starbucks out!). The Glam Adelaide team have coffeed at most of Adelaide’s cafes but we think we’ve found a cafe that is dear to our hearts.

Ayla’s Cafe in Bent Street, just off Rundle Street, is the perfect place to sit back, enjoy soul-soothing coffee and treat yourself to gorgeous vegan, vegetarian, and meat-based foods.

Cafe owner Arian sat down with us and told us the fascinating history behind the cafe.

He and his family left Tehran in Iran in 2012, arriving in Australia by boat. The family left Iran because they were worried that they might be ‘disappeared’—Arian’s father had apparently experienced some close calls.

Arian, owner of Ayla's Cafe
Arian, owner of Ayla’s Cafe

The family deliberately chose Adelaide to settle down in because Adelaide was well-known for being open and welcoming to migrants. Arian has since spent time in other Australian cities and is adamant that Adelaide is the friendliest of them all.

Adelaide’s ability to welcome and embrace refugees drove the family to find ways of ‘giving back’ to the community that had been so welcoming.

Their first business venture was a pizza bar in the north-eastern suburbs. It was a great success, but for Arian and his family, it was a disappointment. Their hearts weren’t in it, even though they were making money, so they looked for a different venture with which to give back.

They thought about opening a cafe and weighed up buying one in the city versus one in a surburban shopping centre with a large amount of foot traffic walking past their door. They decided that a surburban cafe was less appealing because it gave them less opportunity to ‘give back’ to the community.

They looked around and by good fortune stumbled on a cafe in Bent Street in the CBD. It was in need of quite a lot of love and attention, paint and new furniture. The owner was looking to get out of the cafe business and the price was within the family’s resources. At first the landlord was not willing to let Arian’s family take on the lease, as he didn’t think they’d make a success of it. But incredibly, the old owner offered to act as guarantor for the family, paying their rent for them if they were unable to, and suddenly they had a cafe to bring to life.

Fresh salad and falafel balls. Yes, it's Vegan, and Gluten-free! - Ayla's Cafe
Fresh salad and falafel balls. Yes, it’s Vegan, and gluten-free! – Ayla’s Cafe

The family had no experience in running a cafe. In fact, they had no experience in handling or drinking coffee—they had only ever drunk tea! But they quickly found an experienced mentor who organised all the coffee details, like sourcing a discounted espresso machine and gifting the family some world-class beans, which they have continued to buy from him ever since. He gave them training in making coffees and they were off and running.

At first, they catered to the vegan market. Word spread rapidly, because Ayla’s Cafe was the only cafe in the CBD thinking about the vegan customer. Everyone who went there found that the coffee truly was excellent; vegans had the added delight that the food there was extremely delicious.

Arian’s mother is the Queen of the kitchen. She has over 20 years of experience as a chef, and 10 years as a manager, and she is the culinary genius who creates all of the fabulous dishes you can find at Ayla’s.

Covid came, and just like everyone else in the ‘people’ business, quiet times were had. But Ayla’s Cafe stayed trading, buoyed by the word-of-mouth reputation they had with vegans and, increasingly, vegetarians.

Once things opened up again after Covid’s worst stages, Arian and the family decided to open up the food to all tastes. So vegans and vegetarians are catered for, and now the cafe’s meat-eating customers can also have their taste buds tickled. For the family, it means that no one misses out.

Word-of-mouth is still the primary method of getting the ‘word’ out about the cafe’s amazing food. One of their most popular dishes isn’t Vegetarian or Vegan—it’s an Iranian dish of slow-cooked lamb in fresh herbs, with red kidney beans, served with saffron rice.

Delicious stuffed eggplant - Ayla's Cafe
Delicious stuffed eggplant – Ayla’s Cafe

Another very popular dish is Persian rice cooked with saffron and finished with sweet and sour Persian berries, all on top of chicken. There’s also a slow-cooked lamb shank served with Persian herbal rice (the rice is double-cooked, which makes it ‘Persian’). Of course, their three different dishes featuring slow-cooked eggplant are extremely popular, and always have been.

The ‘secret ingredient’ in the cafe’s food is the ‘Persian’ influence, the credit for which can be laid squarely at the feet of their mother. It is her expertise with Middle Eastern cooking—Persian in particular—that turns good dishes into great dishes. The Persian influence is subtle, Arian told us, but is the subtle ‘punch’ in the flavours that explode in your mouth.

And it’s not just the food that is given a lot of care and consideration. Arian and the team spent a long time trying out different milks for their coffee. They finally settled on Fleurieu milk as the best. Arian pointed out to us that they are very keen to source as much as they can from within South Australia.

One of the reasons the Glam team are so in love with the cafe is Arian’s very strong focus on customer service. Arian and his team make a deliberate point of remembering every customer’s name and food and drink preference. In a world where a very large number of cafes treat you as ‘just another customer’, Arian’s effort to connect with his customers stands out.

Said Arian, “From the outset, even before we opened the cafe, we knew we wanted to connect with Adelaide, we wanted to create a community of like-minded people who enjoyed delicious food and great coffee.

“We wanted to do all we could to thank this city for all it had given us ever since we had arrived here. So connecting with each customer—and friend—that walked in our door was very important to us. We don’t have some fancy database to store all this information, it’s stored in my head.

“But every member of the team makes it their job to find out and remember their customers’ preferences. Hospitality is a very important part of Iranian culture and we work hard to keep that ethos alive here in our cafe.”

The astute among us will notice that the cafe’s name is ‘Ayla’, not ‘Arian’. It turns out there’s a story behind that.

Before the cafe was born, the family got together for a naming session, even bringing in a graphic designer to help with the naming and of course the logo. Hours stretched into days, a tremendous number of names were suggested and rejected. Then, one evening, someone suggested they name the cafe after their mother, Ayla. Weary eyes lit up, Ayla gave her blessing, and the graphic designer went to work.

New homemade pistachio kataifi - it's vegan, too!
New homemade pistachio kataifi – it’s vegan, too! – Ayla’s Cafe

‘Ayla’ is not only a beautiful name, but it has some interesting meanings too. ‘Ayla’ means means ‘oak tree’, ‘halo of the moon’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘brilliant’, which their mother certainly is. So you see in the logo the elements of the halo of the moon and an oak tree. She is the queen of the kitchen and the reason the cafe has such soul-enhancing food. So ‘Ayla’s Cafe’ it became.

Running a cafe is not as easy as it looks. There’s more to it than standing behind an espresso machine, smiling, and taking customers’ money. When the family arrived in Adelaide their English was not very good at all. So first they needed to learn to speak Australian better.

The family’s father had a senior position in a bank back in Tehran and was very used to handling and understanding numbers, so even though his English was poor, he still had a much-needed and respected part to play in any business the family went into. Arian studied some law so that he could better understand some of the influences on Australian businesses.

Vegan tempeh burger - Ayla's Cafe
Vegan tempeh burger – Ayla’s Cafe

The whole family became involved in learning more English so they could communicate better, especially while they were classed as refugees and were held on both Christmas Island and here on the mainland.

So there you have it; check out Ayla’s Cafe on the corner of Bent Street and York Street in the city and taste for yourself their exquisite foods and world-class coffee. We’re sure that, like us, you will be really pleased you did.

Find Ayla’s Cafe at 13 Bent Street (off Rundle Street), Adelaide 5000.

Follow Ayla’s Cafe on Facebook and Instagram. You can also call them on 8223 5994.

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