Meet Kathy Tsaples, the creator and purveyor of Sweet Greek- Melbourne’s best take-home Greek cuisine.
Transcript:
“Sweet Greek was born out of a dream and a passion that I had, to have a little shop where I could be a purveyor of beautiful food but in particular, traditional Greek cuisine and in the form of take home meals. I had a vision that I could make food, pastries, cakes, spanakopita, anything and everything that would inspire you with food. And this was a dream, for as long as I can remember- I came from a different industry and as most people know now, my diagnosis with cancer, my battle with cancer, is what forced me to say “you now have one chance Kathy to make this dream come true” – it was now or never.
So, after treatment and recovering somewhat, I threw myself into the deep end and created Sweet Greek.
Sweet Greek offers fundamentally traditional Greek cuisine, but gradually each day I’m introducing a lot of modern things into it, like for example, the variety of cakes that we have- taking something, a Greek element, and making it into something more modern each day.
But we also have all the key, core dishes. part of that vision that I had about the shop- I wanted to make life easy for people- that, busy people who are working, they come home late- it’s easy for them to come in and say “Kathy can I have two pieces of moussaka, can I have a piece of chicken with lemon potatoes”, and then take it home with one of our delicious amazing salads, and there’s dinner for them and they don’t need to worry.
They just go home, eat and then relax.
What I love about Greek Cuisine is the simplicity of the food, the simple ingredients, simple cooking process, but at the end of the day there is a delicious outcome- we have a lot of vegetarian dishes, we cook dishes with seafood and meat and it’s purely the fact that you can take these classic simple ingredients add lots of love a little bit of olive oil and some herbs and spices and you create amazing dishes that nurture your soul. That is what I love.
When I would visualise my shop, I somehow always visualised it here at Prahran Market- I used to wonder, how would I get a shop at Prahran market. I never quite knew what you did, or how you went about things. and a friend helped me with that process, we setup a shop initially and then I came into it.
It was important for me to be here – I saw this as the foodie’s market and I also wanted to be surrounded by amazing produce and colourful ingredients and quite often I’ll come in in the morning and I’ll look at all the produce- look at the eggplants, look at the zucchinis, look at the kale, and think – “I’m going to do this today!”
I always do something new each day based on the ingredients which inspire me when I walk into the Market every day – and I can’t help but look at it throughout the day.
Plus, the people, the customers, and the hustle and the bustle, I love that. I really don’t want to be anywhere else.”
To find out more about Sweet Greek and their best take home Greek cuisine range, visit the Sweet Greek website here.
