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New Chelsea Market Tour Stop: Eat Offbeat Cafe!

a bowl filled with many different types of food on a table
Our Chelsea Market Food Tour already features a dynamic mix of food but we are extremely excited to welcome Eat Offbeat Cafe! They specialize in authentic ethnic cuisine prepared by refugees who have resettled in the United States. The cafe’s menu features dishes from countries such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, Nepal, Venezuela and more. The recipes used in the cafe come from the refugees themselves, passed down through generations of their families.
“We are absolutely committed to incorporating different cultures into our kitchen, promising authentic recipes and a delicious mix of flavors. We have recently opened our two new eateries, one at Chelsea Market and another at 550 Madison Ave and we’d love for you to stop by and learn more about Eat Offbeat.”

Eat Offbeat Cafe was founded in 2015 by Manal Kahi and her brother Wissam Kahi, who were inspired by their family’s Lebanese heritage and the experiences of refugees they had met. The cafe aims to not only serve delicious food but also to create job opportunities for refugees in the United States and raise awareness about the challenges they face.

In addition to the cafe, Eat Offbeat also offers catering services and has expanded to sell meal kits and other food products. Eat Offbeat Cafe has been recognized for its innovative approach to food and social impact, receiving awards and features in media outlets such as Forbes, CNN, and The New York Times.

a storefront within chelsea market
a group of people preparing food in a kitchen

We love this story about how it all came about from an article in Cool Hunting:

In 2013—during the conflict that displaced millions of Syrian people, around a million of whom sought refuge in Lebanon—Manal Kahi left Beirut for NYC to attend graduate school. She planned to work in multilateral or environmental affairs, but her concern about the crisis back home and her dissatisfaction with grocery store hummus (clearly two very different issues) started her on a different journey. “You can only imagine the amount of discrimination that was ensuing,” Kahi tells us about the influx of refugees in her homeland. “And I had left, with a little bit of guilt in the back of my mind about not being able to do anything. But there it was,” she says, “when I started thinking.”

Her own homemade hummus, made using her Syrian grandmother’s recipe, had been a hit with friends, and she thought about how many magnificent family recipes were being cooked all over the city. With that, the concept for Eat Offbeat was born.

 

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