Join us as we discover the rich culinary history of Syrian communities in New York City. Beginning in the 1880s, Syrian immigrants settled in lower Manhattan, setting up food shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. We'll taste fermented milk at Arta's Restaurant, reviewed by the New York Times in 1899. We'll listen to opera at Kalil's, a Syrian-owned restaurant which boasted seating for 1,000 at a time! We'll speak to Linda K. Jacobs, a descendant of New York's Syrian Colony and author of Strangers in the West as she helps us to explore the history of this vibrant community. But you can't mention Syrian food in New York without mentioning the James Beard award-winning Sahadi's grocery store, now over a hundred years old! We'll trace the history of the Sahadi family from their arrival in New York to their iconic grocery store in Little Syria, located on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. We'll walk in cookbook author Tracey Ceurvels' footsteps as she prepares a delicious recipe using ingredients from the numerous locally owned Middle-Eastern shops in this neighborhood, the heart of the Syrian and Lebanese New York community today.
Written and Produced by Laura Carlson
Technical Direction by Mike Portt
Editorial Help from Lynne Provencher
Special Guests include:
Linda K. Jacobs holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Archaeology/Anthropology and spent many years working on archaeological excavations and economic development projects in the Middle East. Dr. Jacobs is committed to promoting Middle Eastern culture and knowledge in the United States, founding KalimahPress in 2011 and sitting on the board of several Middle Eastern organizations, including the Near East Foundation and the Moise Khayrallah Center. All four of her grandparents were members of the New York Syrian Colony.
Linda is the author of Strangers in the West: The Syrian Colony of New York City 1880-1900 and Digging In, published by Kalimah Press.
Tracey Ceurvels is a food and travel journalist and the creator of popular cooking and lifestyle blog, The NYC Kitchen. She has been published in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Relish, and Time Out, among other places. Tracey lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter, Sabrina.
Visit her at http://newyorkcity.kitchen.
Her new cookbook, The NYC Kitchen Cookbook is available now!
Episode Soundtrack
Jahzzar, "Solitude" (licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License)
Andy G. Cohen, "A Perceptible Shift" and "Piscoid" (licensed under a Attribution License.)
Enrico Caruso, "Santa Lucia" (available in the Public Domain)