The owner of East Boston’s widely popular Somalian restaurant that has gained national recognition, Tawakal Halal Cafe, is looking to move to another location and has launched a campaign with NuMarket.com.
“We’ve been in our current location for 3.5 years and our lease ends in September with no option to renew,” said Yahya Noor, who owns Tawakal Halal Cafe on the corner of Maverick and Jeffries Streets. “We are looking to continue to serve our home cooked meals in a new space. The neighborhood’s support is so important to us, and we consider you to be a part of the Tawakal Family. We’ve worked hard to introduce our family dishes to our community. We would love to find a permanent home for generations to come.”
corner of Maverick and Jeffries
Streets, has launched an online campaign to help fund a permanent location for the widely popular Eastie Somali restaurant.
NuMarket.com is a platform that helps small businesses like Tawakal Halal get funding from the communities they serve.
“How NuMarket works is when you support our campaign, you’ll get 120% of your contributions back in credits,” explained Noor. “So if you contribute $200, you’ll get $240 back that you can use toward future purchases at Tawakal. This is not a donation, it’s a win-win. We really need the community’s support now so that we can kick off our campaign with a bang.”
The campaign can be found at https://numarket.co/fund/tawakalhalalcafe and has raised $3,690 towards a $100,000 goal.
In 1990 Noor’s family left Somalia due to the civil war.
“We lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before we emigrated to the United States in 1997,” he said. “We spent a year in Michigan but have been living in Boston since 1998. Fast forward 14 years, we opened our first restaurant (at the former Victory Pub in Orient Heights) in East Boston that lasted for two years but that closure never deterred us from not doing it again. In 2018 we got another chance to open what my family and I have dreamed of for many years–to introduce our home cooked meals to our community of East Boston and neighboring cities. Our food has been recognized and praised by everyone that walked into our door and the press.”
Noor said as he and his family were learning how to operate a business, the pandemic hit.
“This was new to everyone and many businesses had to shut their doors, but we decided to continue to operate to feed our communities in need,” said Noor. “There was no hesitation by us. When we lived in a refugee camp we were helped with food and coming to the U.S, this was us just doing our part to give back and it wasn’t for the purpose of business. We were cooking 5,000 plus meals a week in our 300 square foot kitchen and delivering hot meals with the help of the community volunteers to families in need. The City of Boston and non-profit organizations had given us at-cost money to cook meals and that was just helpful for us to stay afloat.”
Noor said Tawakal in Somali means “to rely on” and during the pandemic the cafe relied on the community, and loyal customers made sure Tawakal Cafe kept its doors open.
Last year, Tawakal Halal was featured in an ad campaign by UberEats that paired acclaimed gold medal gymnast, Simone Biles, and ‘Queer Eye’ star Jonathan Van Ness. The ad run, ‘Tonight, I’ll be eating’, was UberEats’s way to promote small businesses during the pandemic. Prior to that Bon Appetit named the small cafe that serves up home cooked Somali cuisine to its annual “Hot 10” list saying Noor’s restaurant, “Should be your first stop off the plane” when coming to Boston.
Noor has received nothing but praise for his food, his community giving and his ability to breathe no life into a forgotten corner of Eastie that abuts Logan Airport.
Boston Magazine named Tawakal Halal Cafe to its annual “Best of Boston” list. In their review Boston Magazine writes, “From-scratch sambusa wrappers stuffed and fried to a hot, flaky crisp, followed by tangled piles of spaghetti sauced with a velvety stew of fragrantly spiced braised goat: Such soul-warming Somali comfort food certainly takes the edge off these anxiety-ridden times. Bonus points for bottles of signature hot sauce available for enlivening humdrum home cooking with East African herbs.”
The cafe was also featured this month on the Phantom Gourmet and appeared over the summer on Chronicle.
Noor said he wouldn’t have been able to make his restaurant a success if not for the support and love from the community, especially during this age of COVID.