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St. David, B.C.
Comm. Feria
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from Inlander
By Eliza Billingham
We are smack dab in the middle of Inlander Restaurant Week, and I think I'm toeing the line between celebration and gluttony. Ironically, Lent started a couple weeks ago, a season of the Christian church traditionally marked by fasting. But instead of eating in mindfulness and moderation, I've crammed five restaurants into four days, or 15 courses in about seven hours. It's kinda like a marathon, but only for my stomach. Just to keep my calorie intake reasonable, I try to eat less during the day so I can feast at dinner. It's an interesting rhythm, not one that I want to keep forever but one that I can probably learn from. It's nice to be reminded that through days and weeks and years, life switchbacks between seasons of fasting and feasting. And for these 10 days, my life (or my job) is telling me it's time to FEAST. And what could be more perfect than feasting with Feast World Kitchen? The nonprofit kitchen usually hosts a different immigrant, refugee or international chef each day. But for Restaurant Week, they're hosting nine of their regular chefs every day — one for each course on their menu. Talk about a lot of cooks in the kitchen.
By Eliza Billingham
In some ways, it was just a chicken. Nick Ivers was cooking at Le Pichet, a little French bistro in Seattle's Pike Place, when someone ordered the poulet. Each chicken was roasted to order, which took at least an hour. Ivers settled into the long process, filling the extra time by prepping turnips and poached grapes on the side. After service ended, he cleaned up his station and headed out for a break. He noticed the woman who had ordered the chicken. It's rare that cooks get to interact with guests, so Ivers took the opportunity to ask her how she liked her meal. He wondered why she'd wait so long when there were plenty of faster options. "She confided in me that she was from Poland, and that this was the first dinner she'd had with her estranged father in over 10 years," Ivers says. "For me, that was just such a neat moment — I was somehow connected in this event. It illustrated the sanctity of food to me, the unifying power of food." Fast forward a few years later, Ivers is back in his hometown Spokane starting Compassion Catering with his life partner and business partner Nazeerah "Nazzy" Pearson-Muhammad. The two self-taught chefs had plenty of other career options — Ivers has a political science degree, and Pearson-Muhammad is trained in world religion and theology — but they've dedicated themselves to food for its unique ability to make the people around them feel loved.
By Eliza Billingham
Nasrollah Mohammadi was a young child when he left Afghanistan to flee the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. At the end of last year, Mohammadi and his wife, Samira, opened Emran Restaurant & Market on Division Street, just south of Indiana Avenue. The unassuming spot is now the first Afghan restaurant in Spokane. Just as food helped Mohammadi learn about the people he encountered growing up, he and his family are offering their favorite dishes to Spokane and inviting the city into a deeper understanding and appreciation of Afghan and broader Persian culture.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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