One day, I was in class at school and we were learning about different countries around the world. One thing we learned about those countries was the food they ate. And it was funny to me. I still remember that about 90% of those countries were eating foods that I've never heard of before. 

Their food looked disgusting, and nothing similar to anything we had in the middle east. At that moment, I knew I had a new goal in life. And that was to spread our unique and delicious cuisine all around the world.

After a long and painful journey, I had arrived at my first desination. America. Upon arrival, I got off the plane starving. Luckily enough, I saw a traditional middle eastern restaurant in the airport I was in. I didn’t think I would actually find something like this here. I actually got pretty excited and curious. I wanted to taste their food to get a grip of how they do things here. When I walked into the restaurant, it was nothing like the middle east.

There was no Arabic seating, the place smelled and looked disgusting, there was no bakhour, the employees were very grumpy, the menu barely had any traditional dishes on it, and to top it all off, it costed a fortune. I thought to myself, “maybe this just isn’t a good restaurant”. 

But when I looked around, all the middle eastern restaurants were all identical. They all had the same thing. expensive, inauthentic, disgusting food, grumpy employees, and horrible seating. It didn’t feel like I was in the middle east at all. All I could remember in that moment was the goal I had set when I was in school. I knew things had to change, I had to introduce the middle eastern cuisine here. 

So I said bismillah and got to work. But it wasn't easy. I ran into a lot of problems on my journey. First off, since I had come from a foreign country, I was only able to land a minimum wage job, so I was barely able to put food on my table, let alone buy all the utensils and ingredients I needed. So I had to pick up a second job, which gave me even less time to perfect my recipes. Also, since I sucked at cooking, I didn’t know what temperatures to cook at, so I was constantly burning myself and food. It was a disaster. 

I was on the verge of giving up, when I remembered the goal I set when I was young and in school. I knew I had come too far to give up. So I kept trying and trying, until one day, I finally hit something. I crafted a middle eastern menu I could confidently call perfect. And I got the opportunity to share that with you all today. Alhamdulillah.