'Flavors From Afar' is not your typical establishment. The cuisine and the menu changes monthly to feature different dishes from the homeland of a refugee or immigrant chef. Meymuna Hussein-Cattan, owner of 'Food From Afar' and creator of the Tiyya Foundation, joined Cheddar to discuss.

'Flavors From Afar' Highlights Talented Refugee Chefs 

flavors from afar is not your typical establishment. The cuisines and the menu changes monthly to feature different dishes from the homeland of a refugee or immigrant chef. The restaurant uniquely highlight chefs from places like Venezuela Haiti belief. Syria and Chechnya. The restaurant owner has a vision to show how refugees are viewed saying quote, here they are the star. And I'm joined by my Mona Hussein Katzin, owner of food from afar and creator of the TF foundation. Welcome to the show. And I'm so excited to talk to you first. How did you come up with the concept of flavor from afar? What is the mission of your restaurant? Yes. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Um, yeah, flavors from afar originated as an extension of my nonprofit, the TF Foundation and it was a community effort. Um, like most nonprofit organizations, there comes a time where you need to consider sustainability. And um, I just tapped on my, um, my networks, I tapped my networks within um, the organization and created a social enterprise committee. I presented um, the possibility of opening up a social enterprise to help sustain our nonprofits programs and we were able to identify food as a existing skill already with the families that we work with. And um, from there I launched as a catering service in 2018 And then 2020 I acquired our brick and mortar in Little Ethiopia Los Angeles. You've said that food is a sense of self preservation. I couldn't agree more with that statement. Tell me a little bit about your experience as a refugee. What food family recipe and native dishes mean to you yourself may muna? Yeah. Um, so our kitchen growing up was very eclectic. Um, my parents are refugees from Ethiopia, but they had fled to Somalia. Um, that's where they met got married. I was born in a refugee camp there and um, I was lucky to grow up with both Ethiopian and Somali cuisine in our household. And although I wasn't able to preserve the our family language, um, at this point, you know, my parents are multi lingual. Um, I think my way in was through the kitchen. So as long as I knew the recipes, I could cook some great Ethiopian food. I felt like it was a sense of cultural preservation and something that I could share with my friends and my family, my family. Now it's curious what's the process of choosing a chef that you're going to highlight for that specific month. Um, we do have like a screening process. We want to make sure that they are serious and excited about the um, the field of culinary arts and we do have an audition that takes place once. Um, you know, things are established and they're selected. Then they work directly with our program instruct our executive chef kenna at flavors from afar. They learn how to operate a commercial kitchen and then in return, we help market them. Um, you know, build their profile and they receive 5% of our proceeds. I absolutely love this idea. Can you share any specific stories of a chef whose story really just moved you, I'm sure you've heard some incredible, incredible stories. Yeah. Actually, um, I'm really touched by our chef Maria Esther who now lives in florida. And um, what I love about her is she's really creative, really enthusiastic. Um, just has like this air of positivity around her and she keeps me hopeful. You know, this is a woman who had to start over, um, and uproot her life from Venezuela and come to the United States and she's done it with some grace. I think when we think of refugees, like, you know, you forget, you know, these are, these are individuals, you know, they have grandchildren, they had careers, they had, you know, a whole life that they've established for themselves and just see how she was able to transform that sense of trauma into this, you know, creative, beautiful energy. I mean, it's, it's wonderful when I don't have too much time left, about 30 seconds. But I do want to ask you this question because you opened flavors from afar the same week that stay at home. Orders were issued for Los Angeles. Of course, that was March in 2020. What was it like opening a business during that time? How did you manage to stay afloat? I did, I did, I think um similar to how I started the organization. You know, just looking at the resources in front of me. Um I did the same thing during the pandemic. I mean we we're supposed to open as a experiential dining restaurant but opened up as take out and I knew that we had to really let people know about our mission and why we're here and why we want to stay. And um it really, it really gravitated towards the right audience and we're now the top one on one restaurant in Los Angeles, one of the top one on one restaurants well, and were listed in Michelin guide. Well, we really hope you come to new york city next. We would love to have you met muna Hussein Catan, owner of food from afar and creator of the TF Foundation, Thank you so much.