The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - The Haifa Room: A Recipe for Peace

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

In the summer of 2021, The Haifa Room, a standout Middle Eastern restaurant in Toronto's west end, started as a take-out window. It has grown into a beloved dining spot. Run collaboratively by Palestinian and Israeli owners, The Haifa Room offers a menu rich with flavours from their childhoods. It's a place where food transcends cultural, political, and religious divides, creating a harmonious dining experience.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. In the summer of 2021, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Toronto's West End called The Haifa Room started out as a takeout window.

It has grown into a beloved dining spot. Run collaboratively by Palestinian-slash-Arab and Israeli-slash-Jewish owners, The Haifa Room offers a menu rich with flavors from their childhoods. It's a place where food transcends cultural, political, and religious divides, creating what the owners hope is a harmonious dining experience. And we're now joined by two of the five co-owners who are trying to share a recipe for peace. And they are Fadi Hakim, whose father is Palestinian from Haifa, and Mark Cupford, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to Canada after the Second World War. And we are delighted to have you two here in this studio

for a conversation that I can hear and imagine our viewers and listeners already saying, there's no way this works. There's no way this works. So we're going to find out about how this works. Okay, Fadi, how did this all come together in the first place? One of our partners, Waseem, he basically kind of came to me at one point and he's like, you know, I've always wanted to open up a Middle Eastern restaurant. At the time, this was during COVID, I had been a restaurateur since the age of 20. I'm 52 now,

so for quite some time. And I've always wanted to open up a Middle Eastern restaurant. And it just seemed like the right time. Waseem was the right person to do it with. So in that sense, I brought on my partner, Joseph, who we already have collaborated before. And then Waseem brought on Mark, who I'd not known before as well. And so I met Mark and then things kind of went, it was just easy peasy at that point, just everybody getting together. And so we opened up during COVID. It was a small takeout window. We wanted to do a dining room, the dining room, but we couldn't do that because of COVID, obviously. So that basically then the

media kind of took it as we are Palestinian and Israeli owners. And suddenly it just kind of became this thing. Sheldon, put the picture up if you would. And Mark, maybe just take us through this. Here's your gang. Who is everybody here? So on the furthest left is Daniel Sus. He's also one of the partners. That's Chef Jason Hemi, who spent many years cooking in Tel Aviv. To the right is Wasim. So Waseem is basically connected us all. He, his family is from Akko and but he... That's northern Israel. Yeah northern Israel but then they moved to Lebanon and then on the right is me and behind us is Fatih. And where did the Haifa room, that name, where did that come from? So Fatih's father that come from so Fatih's father one thing Fatih's father is from was born in Haifa is that true that's right yeah absolutely so he was born in

Haifa um yeah yeah and then Haifa I guess I'll say well imperfectly it's considered one of the best examples of coexistence between uh Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews and more than that actually it's the world headquarters for the Baha'i faith as well. Right, right, right. So you've got a lot going on there. There's a lot going on. And even when the October 7th tragedy and continuing war occurred, there's been town halls

where the mayor had both communities come together and say, no matter what's going on, we live together. This is in Haifa. Yeah. There was a video, and I can send it to you after, of a town hall just kind of reaffirming that message that we live together, we share common humanity, and we, let's not let this situation, you know, divide us. Well, Fadi, that's a wonderful sentiment, obviously,

but how do you make that actually happen in your day-to-day lives well i mean that's all obviously it's it's that's an interesting question it's diff it's it's not easy it's just it's basically like anything i mean since the conflict started where you know i i basically start my day with the news and obviously seeing what went on while you're asleep. And so you kind of start the day thinking about that, maybe a little angry, whatever it is. But then kind of once you get to work and once you start any of the calls,

any time that you speak to any one of the partners, whatever the case may be, we are friends first. So it's very difficult to, you know, we will share our ideals and all of that sort of thing. But at one point, somebody has to talk to a bread supplier. You know, so it's the idea that you basically have to kind of get over any of your problems, sort of work together and, you know. All right, but I'm going to ask two hardball questions here. Yeah, sure. Here we go. Mark, how do you not look at him at some point during your day

and not think what, quote, unquote, your people are doing to, quote, unquote, my people on October 7th is making me furious and I just can't I can't work with you anymore how does that not happen I mean I think first and foremost the Haifa room is the project was that we share a common humanity and I think what's happening right now is both sides are extremely polarized and we're losing that humanity. And no matter what, I look at Fatty and I see a human I love, I work with, I get along with. And no matter what and what happens in the world, we're still face-to-face looking, hanging out, working on this project together.

I actually think we mostly agree about the situation. Like, we get a lot of flack on Instagram. Both sides, you know, people are like, oh, you know, the Jewish side is saying, oh, Haifa is pro-Palestinian. And what does that mean? Are we pro the Palestinians having security, dignity, and prosperity?

Yes. Are we pro-Khomas? No. Okay, let me ask you the same, the other side of that question, which is, how do you not have at some moment in your day, a moment where you're thinking to yourself, I can't work with this guy because what his, quote-unquote, his people are doing to, quote-unquote, my people in the Middle East, is beyond the pale? Well, I mean, it's a difficult thing,

right? Because I was born here. I was born in 1972 in Parkdale in Toronto. So, I mean, yeah, of course, I'm first generation. My parents immigrated, you know, in 1970. So when all said and done, and, you know, I was kind of talking, I was thinking about this before that, like, you know, I grew up in the 70s in Parkdale. Not easy for an Arab to do at the time. You know, tons of racial slurs being, you know, thrown in the schoolyard. But interestingly enough, a few of the people that threw those racial slurs back in the day, I'm still friends with. The idea here is that I think we are blessed

being Canadian, you know, being born here. We see things, unfortunately, like fortunately, we see things, you know, through a little more of a humanitarian lens. We're sort of forced to be together. And within that, like, you know, I think that you start to see commonalities more so. Inevitably, commonalities come out. I bet you one of the things that you have in common is that you probably heard the odd slur during your time growing up in Montreal. No, not directly to me.

And I just think this whole situation, it's so important for us to just talk and not reach these kind of levels of intensity where it's just impossible to have a conversation. And I think the social media, it's just, we're in echo chambers and it's really hard to have these conversations. Well, let me forward that a bit more. Sorry. And I think like a lot of people, even, you know, from my side are saying like, you know, is, I get messages of like, you know, is Haifa room pro-Israel? I'm like, absolutely. Just like there's 500,000 people demonstrating every night in Tel Aviv against,

you know, the current government. I agree with them. I agree with Chief Gadi Yadzinkrot and Benny Gantz and even, sorry, I'm forgetting the head of the opposition right now. But you want to make a distinction? Well, that you can support Israel, but also be, you know, think that there's another way of dealing with the situation. And so, like, I just want to make it clear that I am, we are pro-Israel. Or what that means is we believe that Israel has a right to exist. Fatih believes that. 100%.

However, however, both sides need to be able to live in security, prosperity, and dignity. I just want to make that clear to everyone. Right. Fatih, on October 7th, when the news became known, what did you say to your Jewish partners? Oh, boy. Like, I remember that time. It was kind of, it was difficult because I think, like, the first day, literally the first morning of October 7th, the second that that happened, CTV News showed up at our door and basically said, what do you think? And we're like, what do you mean, what do you think? Would you like some hummus? Like, we don't know, we don't know what to say here. Like, it's not, we're not, we are not experts by no means. Yes, we absolutely live together. You know, we work together, you know, all of that sort of thing. But when all said and done, we struggled

with it because at that point too, with social media, everybody was releasing statements. Everyone was saying, you know, this, that, or the other. We didn't know what to say because we obviously had to speak about it. And at length we did. It was literally a 48-hour conversation. Among the five partners. Among the five partners, absolutely. And it wasn't easy. And of course, what we distilled from those conversations is a simple thing. And I think there's a lot of sentiment of this happening right now as well. I think there was like, I kind of like Nicholas Kristof, the columnist for the New York Times. You had him on last week?

You had him on last week. Yeah. There you go. He has a great, great idea. It's such a simple notion of the fact that, yes, you could be pro-Palestinian. You could be pro-Israeli. That's great. But the most important thing here is to actually be pro-human. And that's sort of where we got to. So what we released for social media at that point in time was that we are disheartened and any sort of violence towards anybody anywhere is just not right. And I think that that is the simple, simple message that we have to do.

It's not the waifu cup here. It's not pick a flag. Someone would have to do it. It's not the wafer cup here. It's not pick a flag. Like it's not going to someone would have to win them. That is not going to make sense. It doesn't make sense to both sides. So we have to have to find a way. Well, let us remember that at the end of the day, you guys are running a restaurant. You guys are feeding people. And you probably would like to be better known for how you do that as opposed to your views on international affairs. So can we actually talk for a little bit here about how you do what you do? For example, deciding on the menu. I guess you had 38 tastings to get the right falafel? Yeah, it was disgusting. It was a lot of falafel. How does that work exactly? It was disgusting.

Like, it was a lot of falafel. How does that work exactly? We basically, yeah, we created a spreadsheet. Everybody got in. You know, I remember a partner, Joseph, was like, oh, no, a falafel is supposed to look like sand in a desert. You know, like, and Mark is, you know. I want it more fragrant and herbaceous and green inside. Yeah, yeah.

And then I kind of liked, liked you know my father's one um and we kind of and we're still not satisfied well let's show some viz here sheldon bring this up if you would clip one we're going to take a look at um at the the building of a perfect wrap okay somebody take us through all this what are we looking at at here? Go ahead. That's a laffa. A laffa? It's a laffa, yeah. What's a laffa? A laffa is... Okay, you've got the pita bread on the bottom. Well, it's actually called laffa. It's an Iraqi kind of, I guess it's called an assaj. Yeah, it's like assaj, but it's based on a Persian flatbread, and it's about 14 inches in diameter. It's huge. It's massive. Yeah. Wow. And you huge it's massive yeah well and you got

also what do you got inside that that is that is the kofta the beef kit the beef kebab sorry and then of course you get to choose everything chopped salad you got the pickled cabbage tahini hummus do you guys come up with that oh that's true that's pretty traditional oh it's true alafa is oh yeah you get if you're in um if you're in Israel. There's many, many laffa shops everywhere. Now, why is that not called a wrap? I mean, I'm... Oh, it could be. I'm just saying the term.

But the actual term is a laffa. Yeah. There. I mean, you can call a wrap if you like. Okay. And how are you sourcing all of this stuff? Well, it's a funny thing because laffa is traditionally, like, more... So, Ha haifa in the

region of haifa one of the most exciting things about it is a street food because uh palestinians and and and the jews have lived together for so long and so many generations they've intermingled and so they have some of the most exciting street food like for instance when i when we first opened mark said we have to have Sibir on the menu. Have to have? Sibir, it's called. So this is a weirdest. Yeah, it was brought.

It's not weird. It's amazing. It was brought by the Iraqi Jewish immigrants to Israel. It's like almost a breakfast food, which is pita with eggplant and egg. But it's become just a very common street food sandwich in Israel. And it has a thing called mango, an amba sauce, which is like a spicy mango sauce. Mango.

What's it called again? It's called amba sauce. And it's like a... No, no, sabih? Sabih, yeah. Is that a Hebrew word? Yeah, probably. Or, I mean...

And what does it mean? I think sabih means morning, actually. It might be an Iraqi word. Okay, yeah, yeah. Arabic word. I actually... That's a good question. I should learn the semantics of it.

But yeah, it's mixed with amba sauce, which is a mango chutney that has fenugreek in it. So it's kind of like, it's interesting, but it works with the tahini in it. And Safadi had it for the first time. He's like, yeah, we got to put this on. I literally had it for a week straight. And then it was like, oh my gosh,

it's absolutely delicious. So I think that that's sort of the kind of where we kind of come from and what we try to do. We play with a lot of flavors, play with a lot of tradition as well in the food and kind of discover it. So, you know, and it varies as well. We can go to Moroccan, we've gone that way,

our chef and the partners have always, you know, kind of pushed the ticket in our dining room. When we were deciding the menu, one of my favorite things that you said was, I want the menu to be like Palestinian mountain cookery. Like village food. And I was like, yeah, I'll eat that. I want to eat that all the time. So I think that, yeah, just. I'll eat that. I want to eat that all the time.

So I think that, yeah, just. Do you get when your customers come in and they, I mean, obviously, if they've arrived, I think they probably understand the unique makeup of the ownership team. What kind of comments do you get? Yeah, boy. I mean. I think overall, very positive. I think ultimately, I think people do want to look at other people with full humanity and hope that there's a better alternative than the current situation.

And I think that even though this is in Canada and it's an idealized situation where we both grew up very privileged here in Canada, it's at least some glimmer of something of inspiration of hope that you're asking your people. No, we look at each other as humans first and foremost, and we have to just keep that focus, our shared humanity and our shared love of the same food. Yeah. So I think a lot of people do get that vibe and enjoy it.

Of course, there's polarizing, you know, groups that want to know our take on our side and what's our opinion and do we have like an official opinion and and want us to get political and we're just like well no we're just serving you you know good hummus and come eat it with us have you ever sworn at him uttered a profanity at him as a result of everything that's going on in the Middle East right now? No, as far as for the Middle East is concerned. Well, everything else but that, really. So if he screws up the bread order, that you swear at him for? Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Got it. Is this phenomenon, and I will call it a phenomenon because let's face it, 99.9% of what

we're seeing and reading and hearing in the media these days about Israeli and Palestinian or Jewish and Arab interaction is awful. And you seem like the one little oasis of something hopeful. Fadi, is it exportable, what you're doing? Well, I mean yeah we opened uh during covid like i said in toronto um and then we did actually open last november in uh in vancouver uh which has been great it's been fantastic it's a superb response to it uh you know everybody loves it you know it's been accolades all around i remember we had to get a press agent, though, because we were supposed to open up in June, and then, of course, we opened in November, and we were like, oh, boy, this is going to suck.

Like, it just... There's going to be a bit of a media storm around this, and so we literally had to sort of get representation to sort of... Sheldon, roll the clip for a second, if you would. Clip number two. Let's see what this is. Fadi, Joseph, and Avi taking a bite out of the wraps. Yeah.

Wow. Ari, excuse me. That's Ari, yeah. And where's that restaurant? So this now, this is kind of our new fast service one. And this is just young at Eglinton, just at 2116. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's just on the street.

How long has that been open? Yeah, it's opening. It's soft open. It's really opening this week. Okay. That's why you have to come after this and try it out. I'm definitely going to check that. That's Ari, so that's our partner in that venture

with Joseph, who's our partner from Haifa, who, yeah, his family was Jerusalemites for like eight generations. Sounds crazy. Needless to say, I'm going to be a customer before long at that place because you're in the neighborhood. And secondly, keep it going, guys. Good luck. Really appreciate it, Steve. Fadi Hakeem, Mark Kupfert. Assalamu alaikum. Shalom to you.

There we go. Here we go.