Food from home: Southbank’s hidden Armenian bakery

Admiration for his wife’s family’s lovingly prepared food inspired Nawid Fayazi to suggest they start what they believe is Australia’s first Armenian bakery, tucked away on Moray St in Southbank.

Tatik’s Delights is a source of fresh, handmade, home-focused treats that inspire nostalgia, especially for those with links to Armenia and the wider region.

“It started with watching my grandma doing it when I was growing up,” Aisha Fayazi said.

“Then she taught me, eventually, and now we’re carrying it on.”

Aisha remembers the smell of honey cakes cooling on the bench and watching her tatik’s hands fold dough “with love and patience”.

Her grandmother, or tatik, came to Australia from Armenia with her children when they were young.

“The conditions back there weren’t the best. They came here for a better life,” Aisha said.

Decades later, the “old school” Armenian honey cake recipe Aisha inherited and adapted remains a labour of love.

To make it, 12 thin hand-rolled and baked sheets of “biscuit” are layered with cream, then rested for 24 hours, during which they “soften into each other until a fork goes through like it’s not even there”.

Customer feedback has described the cake as “fresh and authentic”, “light”, “airy”, “perfectly balanced”, “full of heart” and “to die for”. Some have called it the best in Melbourne, or even Australia.

Aisha is happy to claim both titles.

The business began after Nawid raised the idea one night around the dinner table.

We Googled Armenian food and bakeries in Melbourne and nothing came up,  Aisha said. We thought, oh wow!

Nawid, who had his own construction business, and Aisha, who had left an honours year in medicine after having their son, decided to test the idea online.

Despite having no experience, they launched within three months.

After building a following on social media, they opened Tatik’s Delights to orders in May 2024 and were quickly overwhelmed.

They were working from their home kitchen with the whole family helping, including Aisha’s tatik.

“We had everyone helping out. We were staying up all night trying to get all of them ready,” Nawid said.

The menu included sweet and savoury treats from the family’s homeland: honey cake, layered choc-caramel Mikado, Napoleon cakes, gato biscuits, custard-filled ponchik donuts, and beef or vegetarian piroshki pastries.

While they opened what they confidently describe as Australia’s first Armenian bakery, they quickly discovered it was not only Armenians placing orders.

“It was the Russian community, Ukrainian community, Georgian community. We get people from Lithuania,” Nawid said.

“Obviously Armenian food crosses over with all of these countries, so a lot of people were saying that our food tasted like home for them.”

Less than a year after launching online, the couple signed a four-year lease on a Moray St building to use as a commercial kitchen.

They were living in Southbank when Nawid noticed the empty premises. A shopfront had not been part of the original plan, but requests from online customers and the wider community changed their minds.

So began a commercial kitchen build and DIY renovation for the Fayazis, who had a toddler in tow and another baby on the way.

Through Instagram, they documented the move from home kitchen to café, posting renovation updates alongside photos of their food.

“We showed the whole process of moving from the home kitchen to here and renovating the place,” Aisha said.

“So, we get a lot of people from all over Australia saying, ‘we watched you guys build this place’.”

In October, they opened the doors of the renovated red café, with crowds queuing to sample free honey cake and try the menu.

New in-house offerings included boat-shaped triple-cheese and egg-yolk-topped khachapuri bread and Armenian beef, herb and spice flatbread pizza, lahmajun.

Running the café has meant learning on the job. Their location is not blessed with heavy foot traffic, and they are still getting to know local office workers, but special occasion cakes and office catering are growing parts of the business.

On weekends, the café fills with customers, many with culinary ties to countries of the former USSR. The couple recently started using the Russian name medovik for their honey cake “just to make it easier for that community”.

“We just want to continue bringing that nostalgic feeling of home to people,” Nawid said. “Whether their family is here or overseas or not even from that part of the world.”

“It’s a very nice connection that you can build with people through food.”

“And nothing is better than grandma’s cooking,” Aisha added.

Tatik’s Delights is open Wednesday to Sunday at 84 Moray St, Southbank. •