On the ground floor of Wynyard’s busy MetCentre, in Sydney’s CBD, a small eatery is bringing about big change. Kabul Social is a social enterprise restaurant that sells delicious Afghan food while also providing meals to those in need, and training and employment opportunities for those seeking asylum. At the kitchen’s helm is head chef Roya Moeen, who arrived in Australia from Afghanistan with her husband, son and daughter in 2018.
When she was younger, Moeen had dreams of studying law, but being a young woman in Afghanistan at the time, this was not a possibililty.
“I wanted to go to university,” she says. “But when the Taliban came, I was very scared. I couldn’t go outside.”
Moeen went on to marry, and worked as a chef in her husband’s restaurants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, before coming to Australia with her family. She and her husband then ran a restaurant in Sydney’s Merrylands, before Moeen took time out to focus on their two children. Then one day, she met Shaun Christie-David, CEO of the Plate it Forward hospitality group, which also runs Sydney’s Colombo Social and Kyïv Social restaurants, as well as a second Kabul Social outlet in North Sydney. She was hired as head chef at the Wynyard outlet in 2022, before being promoted to group chef for both
