From refugees to restaurateurs
Syrians who fled a civil war plan to open the city’s first Syrian restaurant.
With the Syrian civil war worsening, Riham Silan and Abdul Abadeh made the agonizing decision to flee their homeland.
They and their three young children spent three years living in a Jordanian refugee camp before immigrating to Milwaukee last fall. Ahmad Nasef, a Milwaukee doctor who grew up in Syria and knew Silan’s family, helped them resettle.
Silan cooked food for Nasef to thank him. Word soon spread among other Syrian-American families about Silan’s talent — honed by years of working at her family’s Damascus restaurant.
Now, Silan’s family is working with another refugee to open the Milwaukee area’s first Syrian restaurant on the city’s south side — redeveloping a vacant, foreclosed building on a street known for other immigrant-owned businesses.
“I had a dream to revive the restaurant we used to have,” said Silan. She spoke through Nasef, who served as an interpreter.
The deli and restaurant is planned for 3060-3062 S. 13th St., just north of West Oklahoma Avenue.
Sleep Tight LLC, an investors group managed by Mohammad Hani Sawah, is buying the two-story, 5,100square-foot building from the City of Milwaukee for $125,000, according to a Department of City Development report.
Sleep Tight, which includes Nasef as a partner, plans to spend $452,500 on the building’s renovations. That work will include electrical and plumbing upgrades, new flooring, painting, restaurant equipment, new siding, security doors, improved exterior lighting and roof replacement.
The Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee has approved the property sale. The full council is to review the proposal at its Tuesday meeting.
Travel ban an issue
The city acquired the 96-year-old building in 2016 through property tax foreclosure.
It was last used as a bar, Club Lex. The Common Council refused to renew its tavern license in 2013 after complaints about litter, noise, public urination and fights.
Nasef and Sawah are helping Silan and her family
start the business so they can become self-sufficient.
“We’re going to make sure she can stand on her feet,” Nasef said.
Abadeh will help his wife cook, although he jokingly refers to himself as “an errand boy.” He worked in Syria as an assistant civil engineer, a field he hopes to eventually re-enter in the U.S.
Also helping at the restaurant will be pastry chef Nawal Motlk. She immigrated to the U.S. from Syria with her husband and three sons in 2016.
Motlk and her family arrived in the U.S. before President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and issued an executive order banning travelers from Syria and six other majority-Muslim nations.
That travel ban, and two other versions, were struck down by various federal judges — allowing Silan and her family to enter the U.S. in September. In December, the Supreme Court allowed the latest version to take effect while the justices review it. A ruling is expected in June.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s Syrian deli and restaurant could open by the end of this year.
It doesn’t yet have a name. One possibility is The Syrian Cuisine. Another is Damascus Gates, an homage to that ancient city.
The menu will likely include items such as grape leaves, eggplant and zucchini stuffed with rice, meat and other ingredients.
There also will be meat kebabs, tabouli salad and perhaps a delicacy that uses sheep hooves and intestine.
“Nobody knows how to cook it except Syrians,” said Nasef, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1992 and has lived in the Milwaukee area since 1997.
The dessert menu will likely feature fried sweet dough balls called awwami, baklava and a traditional Syrian pudding.
One thing the restaurant won’t serve is alcohol, a reflection of the family’s Muslim faith.
Asked how that could affect their bottom line, the couple responds with a proverb: Fortune comes from God, not from you or me.
Besides, the restaurant will fill a niche that isn’t being met in the Milwaukee area, Nasef said.
“When (customers) come and taste the food and get hooked, they’ll come back,” he said.
‘This is their country now’
The restaurant’s location is a stretch of South 13th Street known for its immigrant-owned businesses.
The street was once home to several well-known stores, such as Tadych Furniture, that were operated by people of Polish ethnicity, said Milwaukee historian and author John Gurda.
Those were then replaced by businesses operated by Latinos and other newer immigrants, he said.
Nasef noticed that the future restaurant building was listed for sale while shopping at the nearby Attari Supermarket, which focuses on Middle Eastern foods.
Other nearby businesses include Mexican restaurant Taqueria Arandas, El Rancho Western Wear and Monterrey Market.
“It’s a melting pot here on the south side,” said Robert Montemayor, who operates Monterrey Market, 3014 S. 13th St. “It’s great. It’s the American dream.”
Montemayor is board chair of the neighborhood’s business improvement district. The district collects a special surcharge on commercial properties and spends that cash on beautification, crime prevention and marketing activities.
The new restaurant will be a welcome change from the former tavern, he said.
Operating ethnic restaurants has long been a way for immigrant families to earn a livelihood and build wealth, Gurda said.
And that’s also true for Syrian refugees fleeing a bloody civil war.
“There’s a lot of great cooks among those refugees,” Nasef said.
In addition to operating the restaurant, Silan, 28, and Abadeh, 38, will be living in one of the building’s renovated second-floor apartments with their three children, ages 7, 5 and 2.
“They have to integrate into society,” Nasef said. “Because this is their country now.”