Abdulkader Niori - Chef of Lebanese Taverna
A family restaurant's adopted member
When Lebanese Taverna won the People’s Favorite Restaurant of the Year award at this year’s RAMMY awards gala, the stage filled with several generations of the restaurant group’s owners, the very extensive Abi-Najm family.
But in their daily lives, the Abi-Najms include in their circle more than their own kith and kin. Their family reaches well beyond to embrace members of staff and others who have worked with them over several decades.
No one can tell you this better than Abdulkader Niori. He’s the chef at the Lebanese Taverna in Woodley Park, the District branch of what has become a mini-empire, with 10 locations spread across Virginia and Maryland including a market, two cafes and a catering company.
Niori came to Washington from Eritrea in 1981. He was 14 years old and alone, sent by his parents for schooling. At classes to learn English, he asked around for help in finding a job and was put in touch with the Abi-Najm family.
Tanios and Marie Abi-Najm knew well what it meant to find oneself without support in a foreign land. They had fled civil war in Lebanon in 1976 with their five small children and found themselves in Arlington. There they took over a pizzeria and sub shop, the Athenian Taverna. They had so little money at the time that they could afford to alter only half the sign that hung outside. They nestled the teenage Niori under their wing and started him off at the sink at the original Lebanese Taverna.
By the time they opened their next venture, the Lebanese Taverna in Woodley Park in 1990, Niori had progressed right through the kitchen of the Arlington branch from dishwasher to cooking on line. So they sent him to the new restaurant as assistant chef.
Within only two or three years (“14 or 15 years ago,” he says vaguely, frowning to remember precisely), he was promoted to become executive chef of the Woodley Park restaurant.
It’s extraordinary for a chef to progress from dishwasher to running the kitchen without being a member of the owners’ family, and there is deep emotion in Niori’s voice as he says, “I was raised by the family, trained by the family.”
Since Niori came to the United States, he has seen almost nothing of his own parents, or the two brothers who have settled in Saudi Arabia, or the two brothers and one sister he left behind in Eritrea. In 27 years, he has been back only three times, most recently for his father’s funeral. Two more brothers, out of the total of six, now live in the States. And these days he has a family of his own — three girls and a boy ranging from 2 years to 17. On weekends he plays soccer with them. “And the kids love basketball.” Otherwise he keeps trim lifting weights.
His wife, Niori says, is “a really good cook.” When they go out, they head for French food at Le Gaulois near where they live in Alexandria. He also likes Italian food and loves the foods of his childhood, he says, dishes that relate closely to those on Lebanese Taverna’s menu. “But I have nofavorite — I like to eat everything.”
Perhaps to his surprise, customers showing up in the early days of the Woodley Park restaurant were not from Washington’s embassy community; they were mostly American. “Even in the beginning they were our most regular customers. And they didn’t need much help through the menu,” he says.
He speculates that customers may have directed others toward the restaurant, with suggestions on what to eat there. “I think it may have been word of mouth.” He thinks the advice may have run along the following lines: “If you go to the Lebanese Taverna, you are going to eat falafel. You are going to eat hummus.”
These are two of the most popular dishes on the menu; the one crushed and fried chickpea balls and the other a creamy chickpea and tahini paste.
Clearly he believes in paying his dues for his good fortune. Just as the Abi-Najm family took care of Niori’s culinary education, he passes on his knowledge to the Lebanese Taverna cooks. “I help most of the guys who work for the Lebanese Taverna. I help them a lot. Most are trained by me.” And he smiles with gentle pride.
Lebanese Taverna’s Woodley Park restaurant is located at 2641 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202-265-8681; http://www.lebanesetaverna.com/restaurants/dc/)
This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current newspaper.