Top Sydney chefs reveal their favourite childhood meals from Mum

• Just like Mum used to make: Our favourite dishes (and the duds we'd rather forget)
• Dinner's ready: Four wholesome recipes perfect for family celebrations

The heart of the home is undoubtedly the kitchen, where so many burgeoning chefs first learnt their love of cooking. It was there they watched their mothers, grandmothers and aunts create culinary magic. From handmade noodles thrown in a tiny kitchen in Hong Kong, to stuffed zucchini flowers plucked fresh from the garden, Mother's Day is the perfect time to reflect on the standout dishes that inspired Sydney chefs to turn cooking into a career.

Sharon and Violet Salloum

Sydney chef, restaurant owner and cookbook author Sharon Salloum says her highlight of the week is sitting down to dinner with her family on a Monday evening. Her mother, Violet, usually prepares her favourite Syrian dish: mukloubi bi lahmi.

"It's an upside-down dish of layered, slow-cooked lamb, fried eggplant and basmati rice," explains Sharon. "It's my absolute favourite."

Sharon, alongside sister Carol, took inspiration from their family's cooking for their acclaimed Darlinghurst restaurant, Almond Bar, which closed during the pandemic. They continue to welcome diners to their Ashbury cafe, 3 Tomatoes.

Mukloubi bi lahmi is a time-consuming labour of love, as ingredients are cooked separately before being layered with rice and cooked with stock in the final pot. Violet uses homemade ghee to fry almonds and pine nuts to add texture to the dish, then serves it with a dollop of cool yoghurt on top.

The smell of the ghee as it simmers on the stove brings back fond childhood memories of Sharon watching Violet slowly, meticulously working in the kitchen.

"I probably used to annoy her, I was always getting in her way and asking a lot of questions, just wanting to learn about everything," Sharon says.

"But I learnt a lot from her, and my grandmother, and all of the aunties in my life."

3 Tomatoes,121 Holden Street, Ashbury, 02 8065 1288, 3tomatoescafe.com

Jessi Singh and Prem Kaur

Chef Jessi Singh spent his childhood on a farm in the Punjab region of northern India, where he would sneak in from milking the buffaloes to watch his mother, Prem Kaur, cook in the kitchen.

"Men traditionally worked in the fields, they didn't get involved in the cooking whatsoever," Singh says. "But I was always in the kitchen, and they were always yelling at me to get out."

In a shared household, where the extended family lived under a single roof, the kitchen was always crowded with mothers, aunties and grandmothers competing over the best recipes.

For Singh, it was his mother's mustard green saag that came out on top.

"It was my all-time favourite. It took two or three days of cooking because she would have to take the mustard greens and cook them over a low heat, simmering it," he says.

"Then she would serve it with some tomato, onion, ginger, garlic and a huge lump of homemade, whipped butter. It was very simple but it was the most comforting food."

Singh now runs "unauthentic" Indian restaurants Don't Tell Aunty in Surry Hills, and Daughter in Law in Melbourne, Adelaide and Byron Bay.

He attributes his success to the women of his family, who taught him their tricks of the trade.

"They are all so proud, they tell their friends about how they taught me to cook and how I use their recipes," he says. "I still call them for advice."

Don't Tell Aunty, 414 Bourke Street, Surry Hills, 02 9331 5399, donttellaunty.com.au

Arnold Wong and Bi Show Fen

Every day, up until her mid-80s, Bi Show Fen walked more than half an hour through the streets of Hong Kong to deliver homemade meals to her baby grandson, Arnold Wong, a Good Food Young Chef of the Year finalist in 2021.

"That was her way of showing her love for us," Wong says. "She passed away when I was 12, but I always think she's up there, looking at me cooking for others. I think she'd be proud."

Wong has spent the past few years working at Newtown restaurant Cafe Paci. He says his grandmother brought a wealth of culinary knowledge with her when she fled China during the Japanese invasion of the 1930s. His favourite dish, however, was her zha jiang mian.

"It was like a fried, salty, fermented bean sauce with minced meat poured over wheat noodles. In her younger years, she made the noodles herself."

Wong says his grandmother's simpler dishes, such as her scrambled eggs with tomatoes, still serve as a reminder that good food doesn't need to be complicated.

"It's a very wholesome, comforting Chinese dish," he says. "Looking back, even though she didn't inspire me directly to become a professional chef, the thought of her cooking has inspired me to rediscover my cultural heritage."

Cafe Paci, 131 King Street, Newtown, 02 9550 6196, cafepaci.com.au

Anna and Eugina Polyviou

After a visit to her mother's house, pastry chef and television personality Anna Polyviou's suitcase is so overflowing with homemade halloumi, vine leaves and freshly baked bread that she struggles to make it through airport security.

"That's the way she has always shown love, through cooking for people and feeding people," says Anna.

"I still remember seeing her in the kitchen as a child. The smell, the aromas … I wish I had appreciated it more, the way I do now, but I didn't understand all the love that went into it back then."

As a Greek-Cypriot woman, Eugina Polyviou can whip up a mean moussaka, pasticcio or fish soup, any day of the week. But Anna holds a soft spot for her mum's stuffed zucchini flowers.

"Zucchini flowers are seen as a bit fancy these days, but we grew up with them. We used to pick them straight from the garden," says Anna.

"She stuffs the flowers with rice, beef and pork mince … then she puts loads of lemon, parsley and different spices in there. It's braised in the oven and it's so delicious."

The mother-daughter team will open XO Bakehouse on Illawarra Road in Marrickville later this year.