Refugee chefs deliver food and spread culture in NYC

World Today

New York City is known for its many restaurants, offering food from all around the world. There is a new chef in town now named Manal Kahi. She is a Lebanese refugee who delivers food, spreads culture and employs a staff as exotic as her dishes.

CCTV’s Lorna Shaddick reports from New York.

When this entrepreneur and activist moved to New York from Lebanon a couple of years ago, Kahi was disappointed with supermarket brands, so she started making her own hummus using her Syrian grandmother’s recipe, and it took off from there.

Kahi’s restaurant, Eat Offbeat’s, recruited six chefs with the help of the International Rescue Committee, have been trained in commercial food preparation by professional Juan Suarez de Lezo. They can whip you up an Iraqi Sumac salad, an Ethiopian lentil stew, Nepali cauliflower fritters and much more.

The business is catching on at a time of increased suspicion of refugees fueled in part by the American presidential election campaign.