Perth may have its Toastface Killah sandwich shop, but its status as a Mecca for diners looking for a hip-hop-inspired meal may be under threat with the announcement celebrity chef Shane Delia is opening a kebab shop in Melbourne named after rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
Delia’s high-end kebab spot is called Biggie Smalls and is set to open on Smith Street in Collingwood this December. Delia, who runs Maha in the CBD and frequently appears on SBS, is apparently a big fan of the late rapper and used to drive around with “BGPOPA” vanity plates.
“They were so tacky. I copped a lot of shit, but I loved it,” Delia recently told Broadsheet. Rest assured, there’s nothing tacky about Biggie Smalls: “I don’t want it to be TGI Fridays or the Hard Rock Café. There’s not going to be any pictures of anyone up, and I’m not going to have Tupac Tuesday.”
As for the cuisine on offer at Biggie Smalls, “We’re not reinventing the wheel. Meat and pickles in a bit of bread have been sold on street corners for thousands of years,” he said. “But there’s nothing traditional about Biggie Smalls. I’m not very good at cooking traditional food.”
The shop will look like a classic New York diner, but the food will not be very New York. Look forward to kebabs like the East Coast (fried shrimp with harissa and almond hummus, mint and pickled radish) and the West Coast (slow-roasted pork belly with maple-syrup hummus, pickled cabbage, sweet onions, hot sauce and mint).
When you’re looking for something to wash down your delicious wrap, there’ll be gin and juice on offer and cans of beer. As for sides, the chips are served with beurre noisette, preserved lemon, coriander seed, and salt, and there’s a barbecue-prawn salad if you’re into something lighter.
“I haven’t had an outlet to do easy, cool food. I love the stuff we do at Maha, it’s awesome. But there’s more to me than what we do there,” said Delia. “I like to hang out with my mates and I wanted somewhere with a better bite to eat, and something better than Carlton Draught on tap.”
