Satnam Singh Sony came to Lismore via India and Melbourne and started Masala Fusion restaurant and specialised grocery store, on Keen Street. He and his family are slowly rebuilding their business and helping our flood affected community. Sony took some time to chat with Sara Browne.

My family had a restaurant back in India in Punjab. That’s where I grew up. My father was partly doing cooking and another job and we had other cooks and chefs too.

I started cooking at quite a young age. I wanted to go to Canada to cook with one of the hotel chains but it didn’t happen. I learned my cooking back in one of the hotels, very early while I was still going to school. That was, basically, what I always wanted to do and now it’s been about 20 years. I arrived in Melbourne in 2007 as a student to learn again, a different cuisine, commercial cookery and pastry at one of the best institutions – William Angliss Institute. I was 21.

My sister was already in Melbourne working as an Italian chef in a restaurant at Federation Square in the city, one of the good Italian restaurants. She was a very good Italian and pastry chef. She obviously did Indian but she wanted to do something away from Indian cuisine. I have twin sisters. One is a nurse back in India. My sister in Melbourne stayed six years then I moved to Lismore and she moved to England. She works there now, she has a husband and two children. Mum and Dad are in India, Mum comes to visit us frequently. She might come back here in the next few months.

My wife Erin brought me to Lismore. I was working two shifts to pay my fees which were quite high. The evening shift I was doing as a chef at an Italian restaurant and the night I was working as a baker. In Melbourne I learned both trades.

I met one of her best friends who had just started at my bakery. My boss said she needed to learn all I knew so I had to teach her everything. I was doing French pastry at the time. She invited me to a gathering for a birthday party or something. My wife and I had kind of been put together because we were both vegetarian so my friend said everyone else eats meat and we just cooked vegetarian for you two so go sit out there at that end of the dining table. We sat together and had a chat and then slowly, a couple of months later, we met again at another party.

We got married in 2011. She is a zoologist. She worked a bit for Melbourne Zoo and another place at Flemington. She used to train animals and birds. She did some training of eagles for the Melbourne Cricket Ground to scare off the seagulls. She did her PHD at the university in Albury. 

She applied for jobs all over Australia and New Zealand and after a few weeks got a job offer from the Macadamia Castle up here. It has a different name now. She said ok, it’s a big move for us, we just got married, I want this job.

We didn’t know where Lismore or Byron or Knockrow was, we’d never been there. She flew to Ballina then went for the interview then came back and said ‘it went well and they’re happy to hire me’. So, then it was time to make a big decision. We took a couple of days to decide whether to move up. It was a big change for us from Melbourne city. I thought it would be hard for me to find a job but my wife said ‘you have good skill, you will find a job.’

The next week we flew up to Ballina and searched the surrounding towns to find the cheapest accommodation. On google we found the cheapest houses were in Lismore. We looked on the map and Lismore seemed to be the biggest town, this is 12 years back. We thought the town looked pretty good, it seemed to have everything and we thought I might get a job so we hired a car and stayed a night in a hotel. I ended up asking for a baking job at Goanna – which is where my business is now – and Henry’s. Goanna had all the bakers they needed at the time. I went to Henry’s and met Michael, the owner, and he said ‘yes, I need a baker!’.

The bakery I was working at in Melbourne was huge, it had different sections making cakes, savouries, pastry and a bread section. The last six months I worked there was in the bread section making sourdough and all different breads. I spoke to Michael and explained what I could make and he said he was happy to have me.

That day I had a trial and made a ciabatta, French baguettes and all that and he was happy with that. I learned a few things from his staff and they learned a few things from me that I had learned in Melbourne. Melbourne has a good bread baking reputation. I ended up working four years for Michael.

I wanted to open something with Indian cuisine. In the back of my mind, I thought I should start what my family had been doing and what I liked to do. I ended up hiring a small shop in Byron and started a business there. I was about six years there, it was called Bombay to Byron. That was in partnership with another chef. I sold my share, it became too much to travel every day from Lismore to Byron. When we opened it was different circumstances.

In the meantime, we had our first child and then our second child so it was getting pretty hectic working that far from home. If my wife needed me or the children got sick…I needed to be home and it would take an hour to get home. So, we decided to sell and he was happy to buy my share and I invested the money in opening Masala Fusion.

I bought the Goanna business but I didn’t want to open the bakery so I changed it to the Indian restaurant. That was 2018. It took me three or four months to rebuild and change things. That was my long story short of how we ended up at Masala Fusion.

We were getting pretty good feedback from our clients…until the flood happened. Before that, in August, we struggled with Covid. From August to kind of late November we struggled a bit, doing takeaway. Then all December and January was very good, everything opened and people wanted to go out, they were using dine and discover vouchers so it was very good.

Until that Saturday in February we were very busy then the Sunday we didn’t open, we started lifting everything up. Monday morning was of course the flood. We lifted probably 80% of the stock up to my second floor from the grocery shop, I had the extra grocery shop next to the restaurant, I lost most of the stock. And everything from the restaurant went up to the mezzanine.

I moved ovens with the help of people. I put a post on facebook saying we needed help to move big stuff to the second floor so we had quite a few people turn up and thank you to them. They helped us, they tried every possible thing. Then I was there til late on the Sunday night by myself, filling up boxes and taking them up to the second floor. We knew it was going to happen. Anything that was on shelves I lifted two metres high as predicted from the 2017 flood. But most stuff was on the second floor.

Obviously, no single thing was saved, everything was on the street. The stock I lost was terrible, probably five big tipper truck loads – lentils, spices, rice, containers – all those products chucked on the street. It was pretty hard for us. That was a really hard time mentally too, for mental health.

My home was okay but I had to sell my home to pay off the building. The worst thing for us was that I just bought the building in January on a loan. It was too much of a loan without income so we had to sell our house, we just settled last month. We down-graded, we’ll stay in the area. I requested the bank to stall the payments while I get my income back which they did.

After all this devastation, the challenge was how to rebuild – no tradies, no stock, no income – the total loss is about $520,000. The government gives $50,000. It’s something but not much. They gave me $15,000 as an instalment and the rest is coming, so that’s why my building is delayed. I found one tradesperson from Mullumbimby, he charges $150 an hour. I haven’t got the $50,000 grant yet but I’ve almost spent that on electricals and plasterboards. So now I’ll paint it myself, finish the counter and slowly open for take-away, dine-in later. I don’t know when, it all depends when I get help, when I source the money, and if I’m doing it by myself – when I can finish. A lot has happened with mental health issues for people in Lismore, I’ve been through a bit of it too.

I started cooking as a volunteer chef in March with an organisation called Sikh Volunteers Australia. They came to Lismore March 1st so I welcomed them, they stayed in my house. We set up a commercial kitchen in my garage. We were cooking 1200 meals a day. They had two vans with them. With such a big event that happened in my life – with their spirit, so humble and helpful to other people – they drove two vans all the way from Melbourne to Lismore.

The day the flood happened Manpreet Singh from Sikh Volunteers Australia contacted me. He saw that Lismore had been hit by the biggest flood in history. He said ‘do you guys need help?’ And I said ‘yes we need help definitely’. So, they said ok ‘we’ll be in Lismore as soon as we can.’

They left Melbourne that night, put all the cooking materials – stove, pots everything – in their vans and they got stuck near Grafton because the road was flooded. They spoke to local kind policeman escorted them to Casino on internal roads. They said they couldn’t even find those roads on google maps. He got them to Casino then they came here. They arrived March 1st.

Masala Fusion on Keen Street 

So, from March 1st for the 10 or 12 days they were here, there was so much fear and anxiety, I couldn’t sleep much. We had a houseful of people, everyone sleeping on mattresses on the floor, we had about 12 people. A few families who lost their house came to us, they were sleeping in the living room and five of the Sikh volunteers.

I could see how helpful and generous they were, coming here and bringing all the goods, so it was encouraging me to do the same for the community. So, I’d get up at 4 am and cook everyone breakfast.

To make 1200 meals, you need a lot of prep. From 4 til 11, we cooked the first 600 meal batch then loaded into the vans. They took it to SCU evacuation centre and to the GSAC evacuation centre then they went to Evans Head evacuation centre. Then one van went to town and parked outside my restaurant.

The first few days there was no food in town. We made dahl, veggie pasta, pakora, every day different. Some people dropped off fruit. From 11 I would do the cleaning up. That was my routine for two weeks. Then they left and I had some raw materials with me so I went to talk to Koori Kitchen.

When I went there, I saw people lining up for food. I talked to one of the ladies organising it and I said ‘you need help? I have bigger pots, bigger burners’, she said ‘we’d love you to help, we’re struggling!’. So, March 21st I joined Koori Kitchen. I’m there every week. The pot I took is a 250 litre so we make somewhere between 600 to 650 meals a day.

on the job at Koori Kitchen

I cook one day a week for community service which I feel is for my heart. I want to help my mental health while I go there with my locals, my people I know. It gives me a good vibe and I come home positive. When I go to my shop and I see the broken ceiling and everything it’s a bit…depressing. So, to balance that I go to help. It helps me more because I’m helping people who need it and I can feel the pain for them.

I belong to the Sikh religion. Sikh values, the way they encourage us, is the way I was brought up because my parents follow strict Sikh religion. It shows me to help others when you can, especially in hard times. If you are Sikh you need to do something for others. I’m trying to pass it on to my children, they are still very young.

My older daughter, she is seven years old, during the school holidays we were cooking for Koori Kitchen every day. My wife was working to pay the bills, run the house, and I was taking my daughter to show her what we do other than making money and working for others. Some time we need to help community. She understood. She was helping passing containers and filling them up. She got some good feedback from the people coming too, they said ‘oh you’re doing a wonderful job.’ So, it was inspiring the kids to come back and do more.