As our kids grew and weekends were devoted to outdoor activities and get-togethers with friends, I realized just how perfectly so many of these foods, made to be served warm or at room temperature, were suited to casual entertaining. Because the weather throughout the Middle East is temperate for the majority of the year, much of life is lived outdoors. Many restaurants don’t even have indoor seating; diners gather at the tables, conversing with neighbors as they stroll by and stop to chat.
In the late 19th century, Arab Christians left the Middle East by the thousands, fleeing wars and economic insecurity. Between 1880 and 1920, about 50,000 immigrants from areas now known as Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine arrived in New York City, settling in a neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower West Side that would come to be called Little Syria.
While the new store became a gathering place for Brooklyn’s Arab immigrant community, Wade was also building an extensive web of international suppliers. He not only stocked the store’s shelves with hard-to-find ingredients from the Middle East but also began distributing these goods to communities across the United States, becoming a lifeline to the old country for hundreds of thousands of Arab Americans from coast to coast.
Lately we’ve been supporting a number of Middle Eastern women’s cooperatives, who supply us with traditional products rarely seen in the United States, like apple and green fig jam, apricot syrups, and date compote with almonds. We love making these unique treats available—and supporting these women in roles they never have had the opportunity to experience before. And when we opened our café, we began importing wine produced in Lebanon to showcase the winemaking strengths of the region.
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