Shawarma, Ready-to-Eat: Arab Cuisine Invades Camp Pendleton
Denise Hazime, a Muslim woman, contacted food services officials here last July with what she thought might sound like a preposterous proposal: She wanted to open an Arabic food stand on the largest Marine base on the West Coast.
It turned out to be an appetizing idea. Marines returning from Iraq and the Persian Gulf were pining for pita, according to focus-group surveys conducted on the base.
Last month, Ms. Hazime and her husband, a Marine veteran, opened “Dede Med’s Shawarma House”—the first Arabic food stand on a base with a daytime population of 60,000 hungry Marines and civilians.
Minutes after the place opened, Travis Post, a Marine captain from Oklahoma who had been stationed in Iraq for seven months, pulled up in his car. “So you’ve really got shawarma back there?” Mr. Post asked, referring to the spicy grilled meat sandwich popular throughout the Middle East.
“You want one?” asked Ms. Hazime’s husband, Crisantos Hajibrahim, who was working the cash register.
“Heck, yeah!” Mr. Post responded. While training Iraqi police, he had shared meals with locals daily. “There was a lot of lamb in my life,” he says.
As Mr. Post grabbed his $7 sandwich and walked away, he yelled,”You’ll see me next week.”
For decades, American troops have been on the front lines of foreign cuisine, sampling exotic foods during even the most dangerous conflicts.
Since 2001, more than 2 million military service members have been deployed to the Middle East. While many take their meals on U.S. bases there that serve American-style food, those sent to villages and neighborhoods quickly learn about lamb, flat bread, and the ubiquitous chickpea. In the Middle East, shared meals are often a key part of forming bonds and winning trust.
“They’re deploying to that part of the world and they’re developing a taste for that kind of product,” says Lane Jones, Camp Pendleton’s director of community services.
Camp Pendleton—a sprawling, 125,000 acre base 38 miles from downtown San Diego, had already been expanding its cuisine, adding Mexican, Chinese and soul-food places. But Ms. Hazime’s shawarma stand is a more delicate proposition than the base’s planned opening of a Panda Express selling Americanized Chinese food.
“This is not about war. This is not about politics. This is about shawarma,” said Ms. Hazime. “And falafel, ” she said, referring to the fried chickpea patties, a big part of the cuisine.
Ms. Hazime, 29, was born in Detroit to Lebanese immigrant parents, and raised in Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb where Arabic food, music and language were popular because of the concentration of Arab immigrants there.
She practices Islam, but wears her long, dark hair loose and uncovered. At home, she favors University of Michigan sweatshirts.
Her husband, Mr. Hajibrahim, 31, born to a Palestinian father and a Mexican mother, was raised in Tucson, Ariz., and doesn’t speak Arabic. He joined the Marines in 1996, and retired in 2000 as a lance corporal.
The two say they worried about opening their stand at the base so soon after the incident Nov. 5, at Fort Hood, in Texas, in which Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim Army psychiatrist allegedly killed 12 in a shooting rampage. But Camp Pendleton officials encouraged them to proceed.
Before she opened her stand, Ms. Hazime, who is also a real-estate broker in Irvine, Calif., had already built up a loyal following for her cooking. Her online alter ego, “Dede Med,” is the reigning Internet queen of the mashed chickpea spread called hummus. Ms. Hazime’s Web site, featuring recipes, is called “Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen .” She teaches cooking with short, online videos. Her hummus video is the No. 1 hummus recipe video on the Internet, with more than 343,000 views.
Ms. Hazime’s husband, who owns a computer business installing Google applications, manages her online career. Each night, Mr. Hajibrahim logs onto his computer from the couple’s small apartment and searches Arabic food recipes to see where his wife ranks. “I watch for threats,” he says. Mr. Hajibrahim was briefly concerned about one online competitor, but stood down after the contender “made a critical mistake. She deviated to pumpkin bread.” Mr. Hajibrahim says he won’t let his wife post anything but Middle Eastern recipes. “You must specialize,” he says.
Mr. Hajibrahim had often said of his Marine days, “Whenever we go to war with a country, we bring back the food.”
His reminiscing gave Ms. Hazime the idea to open a stand on Camp Pendleton. “It just hit me,” she says.”it makes perfect sense.”
Ms. Hazime cooks Lebanese-style recipes. But what she and others refer to as Mediterranean food is familiar on Turkish, Greek, Israeli, Armenian, and Persian menus, to name a few.
Annual gross sales for contracted food vendors at Camp Pendleton soared to $24 million in 2009—a 31% increase over 2008. Camp Pendleton officials expect contracted vendor-food sales to exceed $30 million in 2010. Ms. Hazime and Mr. Hajibrahim knew the base would be a lucrative market.
On the stand’s first day of operation, the smell of grilled beef wafted toward the camp’s fitness center and drew in Marines passing by. One of them was Alexander Harris, a 25-year-old corporal who was stationed in Afghanistan.
Mr. Harris said he ate every meal on the base. But he knew something about Middle Eastern food from his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tenn.
“I love the shawarma,” he said, watching as Ms. Hazime smothered his sandwich with raw onions and garlic sauce. Mr. Harris said he often ate shawarma at a local restaurant when he was back home. “I’m glad we finally have it here,” Mr. Harris said. Ms. Hazime handed the young Marine his sandwich. Mr. Harris grinned and said, “Now this is exciting.”
Tamara Audi
Wall Street Journal