Going Mainstream

A traditional bread oven has pride of place at the front of the restaurant.

Sahara Restaurant introduces traditional Chaldean dishes to the public

By Cal Abbo

Sahara Restaurant was founded in 1981 by Saad Attisha in Ferndale. By 1984, it had moved to Oak Park. Now, 40 years later they’ve expanded to several locations, including the newest in downtown Detroit.

Zeana Attisha runs the restaurant’s operations with her husband Saad. She’s proud of her Chaldean culture and tries to emphasize it in every way at her restaurant. Whereas there is plenty of great Arab food in metro Detroit, Attisha creates her menus to reflect her Chaldean heritage and honor the dishes that are famous in her community.

The new location in Detroit opened last year. It offers itself as one of District Detroit’s gems and sits at the heart of the city’s burgeoning entertainment center. It’s a short walk from Comerica Park, Ford Field, and Little Caesar’s Arena, and is around the corner from the Fox Theatre.

Attisha said she met multiple times with the Ilitch Group, which specifically wanted a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean restaurant in their District Detroit. After lots of talking back and forth, as well as representatives’ taste-testing Sahara’s fresh Chaldean cuisine, they decided to go with the metro Detroit staple.

The Detroit location, while popular, would present a new challenge to the Attishas. The other Saharas are located in Sterling Heights and Oak Park, two places where there are plenty of Chaldeans and other cultures familiar with that type of food. This meant that it gained traction quickly and maintained it by providing quality food at a good price.

Zeana Attisha and her husband run all three Sahara Restaurant locations.

In Detroit, the population that frequents Sahara, which consists of local residents and businesspeople taking their lunch, are generally unfamiliar with Arab food, and especially Chaldean food. “A lot of people have been eating Mediterranean food, because it’s healthy, but most people don’t know our Chaldean food,” said Zeana Attisha.

She constantly finds herself explaining the different kinds of foods to her new customers. While it may be tempting to abandon the project and serve foods that are more popular, she sees herself as an educator, introducing the broader community in Detroit to Chaldean foods, sharing her homemade dishes with the rest of the world. Slowly but surely, the customers are catching on, and she notices them ordering outside of the traditional Arab foods and branching out into Chaldean-specific dishes.

Attisha’s parents came to the Detroit area in 1967, before she was even born. “When I asked my father why he chose Michigan, he said he had heard about job openings and especially the auto industry,” she said. “He already had family here. Religious freedom was also a big part of it, they felt that they didn’t have that freedom in Iraq.”

The Chaldeans migrated to be together, according to Attisha. They resettled in Detroit and other places throughout the United States and abroad. “It’s almost as if they’ve recreated a new village for themselves by attending church, having Chaldean restaurants, and being together.”

This feeling of community, for Attisha, has been especially cultivated by the food that brings the families together during their meals. Her goal is to share these dishes and, by proxy, this feeling of community with people outside the Chaldean community.

Chaldeans now play an integral role in Detroit, Attisha said. “I would follow my dad to work when I was younger. He had party stores, supermarkets, liquor stores, and a produce business in Detroit, so I’m very familiar with the city,” she added. “Chaldeans play a huge role in keeping the economy moving and providing jobs to citizens in the area. We love working with the city and being a part of its revival.”

Last year, Attisha hosted a grand opening for the new location. “We had such a huge crowd show up and we weren’t expecting that. We did a buffet layout of all kinds of different Mediterranean food,” she said. “Mayor Mike Duggan, some councilmembers, Chris Ilitch and his family, plenty of businesspeople, they were all at the grand opening, and there was a line of people out the door who wanted to try our food.”

Attisha tries hard to honor her culture and heritage in her restaurant in general, not only with the food. “We did a little bit of urban décor here,” she said. “I have some things in the restaurant that my mom brought over from Iraq.”

One wall showcases these Chaldean items, including a doll with a traditional Chaldean dress, a book about the Chaldean heritage and history, and many other pieces of art or dishware. “It was important to me to design the restaurant with that Middle Eastern flair,” she said, pointing to the colorful decorations around the interior. “The jewel tones really stand out and the colors come from the heritage of Iraq and Babylon, because that’s where Chaldeans descend from.”

At her restaurants, customers can try Chaldean-famous dishes like dolma, which consists of meat and rice-stuffed grape leaves, stuffed onions, and stuffed eggplant. They can also try a variety of meats that are popular in Chaldean cuisine from kabob to lamb shank to tikka to shawarma. On the weekends, Sahara even offers the controversial dish called pacha, which is rice and meat stuffed into intestine. At her restaurant, it’s as authentic as it gets without actually eating at home.

“The first thing about Chaldeans is service,” Attisha said when asked about how she honors her heritage. “Someone walks in: What do you want to drink? What do you want to eat? We’re famous for feeding people. We treat our customers like family, and they host their communions, baptisms, engagements, birthdays, all kinds of parties with us.”

Attisha also believes that Chaldean food is particularly healthy, especially when made with fresh and high-quality ingredients, and especially when compared to the modern American diet. “It’s interesting to hear on the news about these new health foods, like taking turmeric vitamins. Turmeric, for example, is prominent in Chaldean dishes,” she said. “We use recipes that are very healthy and often use organic ingredients. Bringing Sahara to the broader community will allow the public to enjoy what we’ve been so fortunate to have all our lives.”

In the same vein, Sahara shows off its traditional bread oven at the front of its restaurant. Throughout the day, the cooks use the oven to make delicious bread that tastes as good as it smells. “We use a lot of cooking techniques that are basic, that our parents and families use,” Attisha commented. “The pita bread is the most popular as well as samoon and tandoor. We make it fresh every morning, including the dough. Just the old-fashioned way they used to make bread at home. Flour, water, yeast, and a bit of butter.”

One of Attisha’s proudest accomplishments was her political work in Oak Park. Since the 1980s, Sahara has called the city its home. But since Oak Park was chartered decades earlier, it labeled itself a “dry city” and banned the service of open alcohol containers. This means that bars couldn’t operate within city limits and the only alcohol that could be served was a closed bottle.

Attisha strongly believed that this was hampering the city’s development, and she wanted Sahara to serve open alcohol as well. In 2011, she started a campaign to allow for the sale of liquor in a glass at a restaurant or bar. Since it was in the city’s charter, that meant it had to be placed on a ballot and voted by the residents in the city, once she got enough signatures.

It passed a year or two later. “I could’ve left the city when the economy was slowing down and Chaldeans were moving out,” she said. “We decided to stay, to bring vibrancy back to the city of Oak Park, and get this passed on a ballot. Now we can see breweries in Oak Park opening up that offer beer, wine, and liquor in an open glass.”

The future of Sahara depends on Attisha’s husband and children, she said. One of her kids is involved in the business and has ideas to take Sahara nationwide with “Sahara Express,” a miniature version that focuses on food compared to the lavish comforts and bar service that Sahara is known for throughout the metro Detroit area. Although the idea is still in its early stages, Attisha is excited but nervous about how their high standards will translate to a smaller space.

Attisha thinks the future is wide open for Chaldeans. While she acknowledges the tradition of staying close to home, she hopes that Chaldeans will take opportunities wherever they come up. She told a story about her sister who moved to Texas.

“She met a random girl one day in her neighborhood. She went into her house and saw a picture of our grandfather on her shelf. ‘What? Why would you have that?’ It turns out that this girl was the great granddaughter of my grandfather’s brother,” she said. “It’s good to know that Chaldeans are everywhere.”

For someone who wants to break into the industry, Attisha’s advice is simple: start in the kitchen. “If you can’t wash dishes and cut meat and chop lettuce, if you think you’re too good for that and you’ll just hire someone for that, it’s not going to work,” she said. “Restaurants are long hours and hard work. You have to be willing to serve the community. The owner has to be able to get down and dirty and lead by example.”