Meet ‘Flavors from Afar’: A Restaurant That Employs Refugee Chefs

The March 5 meeting of the Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills board of directors was held at an unusual location — a yet-to-be-opened restaurant and catering company called Flavors from Afar, located on Fairfax Avenue near San Vicente Boulevard, alongside a cluster of Ethiopian restaurants in the area known as Little Ethiopia.

Flavors from Afar is a social enterprise launched in 2018 by the Tiyya Foundation, a nonprofit that provides community support for families of refugees, low-income immigrants and displaced Americans, in response to government funds shifting away from refugee aid. To expand their youth and family programs in Los Angeles, the Tiyya Foundation was housed at Temple Emanuel for approximately two years. As Flavors from Afar grew away from programming and acquired more catering jobs, Tiyya co-founder Meymuna Hussein-Cattan told the Journal, it spun off into its own for-profit entity; all profits from Flavors from Afar help to sustain programming at the Tiyya Foundation.

When Temple Emanuel decided last summer to sell its building at 8844 Burton Way, former board member Diane Vanette, an early connection between Tiyya and the temple, told the Journal she “spent the summer trying to empty the building,” including a professional kitchen that served a school full of kids. “If we were going to empty the building, we needed to give everything we could to someone who could use it,” she said.

At the board meeting, which the Journal was invited to attend, Hussein-Cattan told attendees, “Flavors from Afar was made possible by your temple.” She also thanked the board for providing initial housing for the catering business and donating its kitchen equipment to the restaurant.

The restaurant was scheduled to officially open to the public on March 21, with a grand opening event sponsored by Temple Emanuel, the Sun Family Foundation, Oxfam, MAJOR (Muslim and Jewish Organized Relief) Fund and the Little Ethiopia Cultural and Resource Center. However, that changed when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced on March 15 that in an effort to curb the fallout from the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, all restaurants must close to dine-in customers through March 31.

“Instead of a festive international sampling event, we have shifted gears to encouraging takeout instead,” Hussein-Cattan told the Journal in an email on March 15. “Our doors will be open but we will only prep in the back. No buffet stations or sampling stations. We don’t want to expose the chef to a lot of people [and] we want our staff and customers to feel safe.”

Flavors from Afar’s catering was helmed by 11 chefs from nine countries in 2019: Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Kenya, Syria, Somalia, Venezuela and Guatemala. At the board meeting, chef Malia Hamza, a single mother whose six children regularly participate in Tiyya activities, served Somali food and spoke about how her family fled the Somali Civil War, lived in a refugee camp in Kenya and then arrived in the United States when she was 7 years old.

“Every one [of the chefs] has unique foods that are not in mainstream culture, and all are dealing with displacement and trauma in different ways,” Hussein-Cattan told the board members. “It’s been beautiful. We’ve watched these chefs feel inspired to talk about their skills, their talents; something they know how to do.”

“Everyone has unique foods that are not in mainstream culture, and all are dealing with displacement and trauma in different ways. We’ve watched these chefs feel inspired to talk about their skills, their talents; something they know how to do.”— Meymuna Hussein-Cattan

“The part that I would emphasize is that these programs aren’t just writing a check to somewhere distant, but it’s really building a relationship,” said Peter M. Siegel, Temple Emanuel’s primary point person for the Tiyya partnership.

In 2018-19, Temple Emanuel had been hosting monthly events with Tiyya catering for chefs to practice their skills and their storytelling as they addressed attendees, talking about their work, telling their refugee stories and discussing their aspirations.

“It was a great opportunity for them to be in a safe environment but one where they also had to learn the business and how to do it efficiently so they could make a living doing it,” Siegel said. “It’s not a handout. It’s really a job that they’re learning, a skill that they’re learning.”

This year, Tiyya is launching a pilot concept to help refugees join the hospitality industry. On graduating, they could find jobs in kitchens throughout Los Angeles and Orange County, or be hired by Flavors from Afar.

Board co-president Geoff Wharton said it was the first time Temple Emanuel had held its board meeting outside the synagogue. “It underlines to everyone the importance of what we’re doing; that it’s not just a commitment for the rabbi but for the larger community,” he said. “It’s part of a bigger value system of social justice and consistent with the values of having an institution stand for something.”

Board co-president Myra Lurie added, “One of the key values of our synagogue is social justice, and we feel that especially helping the stranger and giving aid to those who are less fortunate is really living the Jewish values that we hold dear and which guide us as a synagogue.”

“Our heart has always been with the stranger,” Vanette said in a separate phone call with the Journal. “As we know, that’s particularly a struggle around the country and in Los Angeles. We have focused a lot of our social justice work with people who are struggling.”

“The model we have is one of doing things — getting them done and showing people,” Siegel said.

Added Wharton, “I think there’s a general reluctance to talk about good work, but if we do something good we should let people know —  not to take credit, but to let people know that this is our values system and if they want to be part of it, they can join and make the commitment.”