New Timmins restaurant offers authentic Lebanese cuisine

Two members of the Muslim community in Timmins have opened an authentic Lebanese restaurant.

Both told CTV News they wanted the city to have traditional Middle Eastern food as a way to bring communities together.

Fawaz Alahmed said grew up around shawarma, like anyone in the Middle East.

Even after his family arrived in Lebanon from Syria because of civil war in 2011, Alahmed said the food was a constant.

“Every, like, 50, 100, 200 metres, you will find, like, a store, shawarma restaurant,” he said.

It’s something Alahmed said he missed when moving to Timmins in 2018 to start a new life.

His business partner, Vakkas Momaya, said he took a liking to the food when moving from India to Toronto in 2013, but found northern Ontario was lacking in authentic food.

Dreaming of opening his own restaurant, Momaya wanted to make sure the food was made just like it would be in the Middle East.

He then met a newly arrived Alahmed at the local Islamic Association.

“It took us long to get to know each other because of the language barrier and stuff,” said Momaya.

“And then, slowly, slowly, we started talking to each other a few years ago and then we planned all this.”

The two bought a shuttered eatery and got to work to make food to traditional standards, with daylong, freshly-marinated meat seasoned with 15 spices and roasted on spits -- and served with imported traditional bread.

Alahmed even convinced a traditional chef from Montreal to relocate to northern Ontario.

“This is the real shawarma,” he said.

Momaya said it was natural to partner with someone who not only grew up with this food but also shares his religion, his values, his struggle in moving to a new country -- and who has become a good friend.

“Our mentality, our behaviour, our way of thinking, it’s pretty much the same and that’s how we get along so well,” he said.

Just celebrating the restaurant’s soft opening, Alahmed said having flavours from his home country here can help others from the Middle East feel more at home, as well.

“They say, like, we need this food here, we miss this food,” he said.

Alahmed wants to welcome the community that supported his family to enjoy some authentic Lebanese food.

The restaurant is called The Fusion Grill, meaning the plan is to also incorporate some Indian cuisine to honour Momaya’s culture.