Loading ...Eastern Market tour offers a taste of Arab-American history in Detroit
Owner Ali Rizk watched with pleasure Saturday morning as shoppers flocked to get a taste of the juicy lamb kefta sizzling on a grill outside his shop, Adam’s Meat, in Detroit’s Eastern Market.
Some people weren’t sure exactly what kefta was, but the aromas told them it was something delicious, and after tasting the spicy ground meat patties, several headed into Rizk’s store to take some home.
For about a dozen of the tasters, Adam’s Meat at Market and Winder was the last stop on the Yalla (Arabic for “Let’s go!”) Eat! Culinary Walking Tour, organized by the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn to highlight historic Eastern Market’s Middle Eastern- and Arab American-owned food businesses.
But the two-hour tour, led by docent Sonya Kassis, was much more than a tasting and shopping trip. It was a glimpse into the history, culture, language and cuisine of the Middle Easterners and Arab Americans — Christian and Muslim alike — whose migration to Detroit began a century ago.
Jan McHale, left, and Debbie McCallum, both of Oakland Township, try nut butters at the Germack shop. Frank Germack Sr. — an Armenian from Syria via New York — set up shop in 1924. (Photo: Tim Galloway)
“Most people know about Arab cultures through their food,” says Matthew Jaber Stiffler, PhD, the museum’s research manager. “It’s one of the easiest ways for people to enter an understanding about the culture and the people.” And conducting food tours through Eastern Market “shows the investment in the community that Arab Americans have had for the last 100-plus years,” he added.
As Kassis led her group through the produce sheds and the buildings beyond, she interspersed their samples of cashew butter, cucumbers, shawarma, hummus and more with anecdotes and insights.
“Since the earliest days of the community, food was a big business,” from operating cafés and dry goods shops to running produce markets, she told the group.
“A lot of Arab Americans who came here had little produce stands in their home cities, so that’s what they felt comfortable continuing. It was easy to translate that into a little storefront and eventually into some of the major operations you see today.”
A participant samples tabbouleh at Gabriel Import Company. “Most people know about Arab cultures through their food,” says Matthew Jaber Stiffler of the Arab American Museum. (Photo: Photos by Tim Galloway/Special to the Detroit Free Press)
Halal meats
That evolution describes the history of Saad Wholesale Meats, a major halal meat processor and supplier located at Orleans and Alfred in the market’s less-traveled industrial section. The company was founded in 1976 by Aref Saad, whose father and grandfather in southern Lebanon also were butchers.
“We have served the community for almost 40 years,” company president Samer Saad told the group gathered around him in the chilly retail section of the building. “We carry chicken, veal, beef, lamb — you name it and we’ve pretty much got it. My dad started out in this little shop right here” — now just a small part of the facility.
Halal (Arabic for “permitted” or “allowed”) meat comes from animals blessed and slaughtered in a prescribed way under religious supervision, much as Jewish kosher meats are handled. Pork is forbidden, Saad told the group, and halal and non-halal meats cannot be intermingled. The company does not slaughter animals; it only butchers and sells the meat.
The company also has its own brand of processed lunch meats called Sharifa Halal, launched in 1991 by the senior Saad for reasons every parent can understand: “My dad looked and said, ‘My kids want to eat bologna. They want to eat hot dogs. They want to take lunches to school,’ so he created that line.” Sharifa now includes more than 30 products and has distributors all over the country.
“We take our meats and outsource them to the people who make (the Sharifa products)” in U.S. Department of Agriculture-supervised facilities, Saad said. “It’s all monitored by USDA, so everything is done according to Islamic law based on USDA rules.”
Imported Arab foods
Back outside as the tour headed farther down Orleans, Kassis pointed out Mr. Swiess Imported Foods on Adelaide, started in 1972 by Jordanian immigrant Elias Swiess. The company imports foods from the Arab world, specializing in olive oil and dried produce. One important item is mulukhiyah, a leafy green vegetable like collards or kale that is typically sold dried. Boiled with chicken or meat, flavored with garlic and lemon, and served over rice, “It’s really delicious,” she said.
“A lot of Arabic home dishes are prepared that way. In addition to the grilled meats and kabobs you find, you’ll also find a lot of stew-like dishes where they boil meat and add vegetables,” such as peas, green beans, spinach or okra, she said.
At the corner of Orleans and Winder she paused near Berry & Sons Islamic Slaughter House, a historic building where the name Louis Fineman is engraved in stone above the door.
“This building was once owned by a Jewish person,” she said. “Now it holds a Muslim Arab company, right across the street from a Catholic church. … I think it’s so interesting because you see part of the history of Detroit right on this one little corner,” evidence of the waves of immigrant groups that have passed through Eastern Market as they assimilated into America.
“A lot of Arab-American immigrants to Detroit shopped here in Eastern Market because this is where they could find the meat and produce they wanted,” Kassis said. Her own father brought her and her siblings there as children to see the baby chicks and ducks for sale, but when Arab stores began opening in Dearborn, she said, he began shopping there.
Metro Detroit’s community
Metro Detroit’s Arab-American community is not the oldest in the U.S. — that’s in New York — but it is still one of the most concentrated in the country.
The first and largest group of Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants to Detroit were Christians who came from an area then known as Greater Syria, Stiffler says. “They were all called Syrian, even if they came from Palestine or Lebanon.” They are the group that established the first Middle Eastern restaurants here, defining the cuisine for metro Detroiters, he said.
While the early Arab Christians mostly settled near the Detroit River, Kassis said on her tour, the later-arriving Arab Muslims moved to Highland Park near the Ford factory. When Ford moved operations to the Rouge Plant, they followed. “So the south end of Dearborn has a large Arab-American community to this day,” she said.
A majority of metro Detroit’s Arab Americans are Christian, but that’s changing somewhat as new immigrant groups arrive. Once about 60-40 Christian-Muslim, the Arab community now is edging closer to 50-50, she said.
Cravings turn into a business
But whatever their faith or homelands, Arab and other Middle Eastern immigrants’ longings for the flavors of home are similar and have left their imprint on Detroit’s — indeed, America’s — food culture.
That’s perhaps most evident on Russell Street, where Frank Germack Sr. — an ethnic Armenian from Syria via New York — set up shop in 1924.
He’s the reason Detroit is the unlikely home of the oldest pistachio-roasting company in the U.S.
The Germacks “were craving things they were used to. That’s what an immigrant does: They want something they’re familiar with,” Kassis said. “Nuts — especially pistachios, almonds and walnuts — are a big part of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern diet.”
So when they couldn’t find what they wanted, “they recognized an opportunity to create a business out of it,” she said.
As immigrant stories go, it doesn’t get much more American than that.
Contact Sylvia Rector: 313-222-5026 and srector@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @SylviaRector.
If you want to go
The three remaining Yalla Eat! Culinary Walking Tours at Eastern Market, organized by the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, are sold out with the possible exception of the upcoming Saturday tour. To check availability, go to www.arabamericanmuseum.org/yallaeat.
More Yalla Eat! tours are scheduled this fall, however, on Dearborn’s Warren Avenue.
Tours will take place Saturdays and Tuesdays — Aug. 29 and Sept. 1, 5, 8 and 12. Tickets are not yet available but will go on sale in late June or early July at www.arabamericanmuseum.org/yallaeat. The price is $20 ($15 for museum members) and must be paid online in advance. Full details will be posted when tickets go on sale.
Another museum-produced culinary resource is the colorful new Yalla Eat! Culinary Map of Dearborn, showing established Arab-American restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores. Just published, it is available free upon request at the museum’s front desk during regular business hours at 13624 Michigan in Dearborn. For more information, visit www.arabamericanmuseum.org or call 313-582-2266.
Source: www.freep.com