Falafel and Family: Abu Yarub Al-Shami

Thayer Street is powered by small businesses, many of which are immigrant-run. In a sea of competition, Al-Shami stands out for its corner store feel and bold flavors. What most customers probably don’t know is that for Ayia Tatari, owner Amir Tatari’s daughter, her everyday responsibilities extend beyond the cash register.

“Thanks, have a nice day!” Ayia smiles as she hands over a lamb shawarma wrap to the gentleman in front of her. 1:41 pm, the daily lunch rush has finally wound down. Online orders are taken care of, the fridge is stocked, desserts at the counter are refilled, and the floors are swept. A couple of customers trickle in. 

“Okay baba, the last order was number thirty-eight. I’ll see you tonight,” Ayia says. She runs back behind the counter and downstairs to her locker. 1:43 pm, she quickly changes back into her school clothes, switches her hijab, and grabs her car keys and backpack before running back up to the restaurant. 1:45 pm, Ayia rushes out the door and hops into her car; her Development of Western Civilization class starts in twenty minutes. 

Nineteen-year-old Ayia Tatari is one of the main faces seen at Al-Shami. Aside from being the owner’s daughter, she is the primary cashier at the restaurant in addition to being a full-time student at Providence College, and the eldest daughter of three. In between her calculus and biology classes, she is at the restaurant processing and packing orders alongside her father. Ayia also manages the communications of the restaurant and helps her father see what she calls the “customer view,” offering menu changes and operations suggestions to appeal to the predominantly American customer base while maintaining authenticity. In the midst of finals season as a first-year college student, Ayia faces pressure to maintain her 4.0 GPA, but also must help manage her father’s business, Al-Shami.

Time management has become one of Ayia’s strengths, mainly out of necessity, since the opening of Al-Shami in August 2021. At the time of the restaurant's opening, and in the months of preparation prior, Ayia was entering her senior year at Cranston High School West. As a seventeen-year-old, she was working as a virtual intern for Prepare RI, a thirty-hour-a-week time commitment and also working thirty hours per week at Al-Shami.

“That time was kind of crazy,” Ayia says. Now as a college freshman, while her work hours have reduced, she has taken on a myriad of new responsibilities that certainly come with their obstacles.

“If I said it was all good parts, I would be lying,” she says. The college she attends, Providence College, is a private Catholic university, that Ayia claims is a “very big party school.” Ayia is a Muslim student, and a commuter, continuing to live with her family in Cranston. 

While she speaks fondly of her year so far in college, Ayia understands that these factors, in addition to her large time commitments between academics, extracurriculars, and her father’s business sometimes make it more difficult to connect with her peers.

“In those two hours between my classes, I could be spending those getting lunch with my classmates, or you know joining a club, or studying with a classmate, but instead that’s when I’m helping my dad,” she explains.

Every weekday from 12-2 pm, Ayia has a break in her class schedule and drives over to Thayer Street to help her father tackle the lunch rush. She has a commitment to the business and her father and aims to show up to make the business run smoothly.

“In my calendar, I literally labeled the two-hour break ‘Baba,’” she says. Baba, in Arabic, means father.

Outside of her classes, Ayia is involved in student congress and also is one of the founders of the Arab Student Association at Providence College. Working at Al-Shami and being so close to her family has helped her maintain pride in her cultural roots, and hopes to create a welcoming community for Arab students alike, in a predominantly White, Catholic student body.

“There are actually a lot of Arab kids here and I feel like there wasn't really a place for them to, you know, celebrate their culture and everything,” she says. The club was newly approved by the university, but Ayia talks eagerly about what she and her peers are thinking about for next year. One of the events she mentions is a Middle Eastern movie screening with Arab catering provided, possibly from Al-Shami.

While Ayia’s social circle at Providence College seems to be expanding, she claims that some of her most rewarding experiences have come from the Brown University community and the Al-Shami regulars.

“Sometimes I feel like not famous, but like known in Providence,” she smiles. Sometimes she feels even closer to the students of Brown than to her own classmates. She recalls seeing familiar faces in Providence and even in Cranston and being recognized as one of the faces of Al-Shami. 

“Some people will say hi to me on the street, and I don’t even know if they know my name, but I know their order front to back,” she says. To Ayia, another part of why the work is so rewarding is the catering orders. She appreciates that large groups of people can come together to share a meal that her father and her worked so hard to put together.

While she admires her father’s work greatly and finds the commitment rewarding, when asked if she had any aspirations of continuing on the family business, it seems like she will stick to her dreams of going into medicine. Ayia pridefully speaks about her father’s journey opening Al-Shami but thinks that is definitely something she could not take on alone. 

“My dad will wake up at five in the morning to go to restaurant depot and he’ll carry like those 25-pound bags of onions on his back– that is not for me,” she says.

Al-Shami is completely family owned and operated. The restaurant, unlike most of its neighbors on Thayer Street, does not have a distribution company, it is solely Amir Tatari driving the production.

The process of opening a small business on Thayer Street involves a lot of risk-taking. The turnover rate for businesses in that area is notoriously high, with costly rent and high levels of competition from the surrounding establishments. Nonetheless, Tatari wanted to pursue his dream. 

The story of Al-Shami’s birth starts and ends with Amir Tatari working on Thayer Street. Tatari emigrated from Syria to Rhode Island in 1990 and picked up a job at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Thayer St. Since then, he pursued his Bachelor’s degree in culinary arts and restaurant management from Johnson and Wales University. Tatari has worked in restaurants all of his life, having first started in a restaurant with his six brothers in Syria in a restaurant with a familiar name: Al- Shami. “Al-Shami” translates to “man of Damascus,” which is where the Tatari family is from originally. While the Dunkin’ Donuts on Thayer Street is long gone, Tatari’s love for Thayer Street remains. Having kept an eye out for a vacant space on Thayer Street, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a blessing in disguise for Tatari when he signed the papers for the 11 by 32ft former jewelry shop in October 2020. 

Although the shop is located at a prime location for Brown students at 225 Thayer Street, its success did not come without obstacles. Prior to Al-Shami, Pie in the Sky, a custom jewelry store existed in the space. This meant that Tatari had to completely renovate the shop and basement to ensure that it would satisfy food safety standards before opening day. The pandemic did not make the process any easier. With people becoming more difficult to contact with COVID and the work-from-home culture on the rise, there were many delays in obtaining the necessary licenses needed for operating a restaurant in Providence, and the store’s opening was pushed to August 2021.

While Al-Shami has maintained its success for nearly two years, like any small business, Ayia explains that there are a couple of limitations within the restaurant.

“The size of the shop, like, it drives me insane,” she says. While she enjoys the homey feeling she contends that a couple more square feet could help in improving the service. She states that there are ups and downs to being completely family-run. Being such a dedicated owner, working 6 days a week over 12-hour days, it is no surprise that Amir Tatari has high expectations and is “picky when it comes to employing people” according to his daughter, and that’s why the business has remained family-run. 

However, Ayia claims that “that’s what makes it so special is that it's just me and my dad serving people,” so while Al-Shami isn’t able to stay open until two in the morning for late-night eats like its neighbor Bajas, what makes them stand out is their impressive dedication to quality food and service and the authenticity of their food.

Ayia has played a strong role in the development of Al-Shami’s menu as well. For many restaurants serving “ethnic” cuisine on Thayer, in addition to the traditional offerings, you can often find more American items like mozzarella sticks, even at a Mexican restaurant. At Al-Shami, while you can find arguably one of the freshest lamb shawarma’s in the area, they also have chicken fingers and even fresh fruit smoothies on the menu. 

“(We) want this place to be somewhere where they can come in and get whatever they want,” Ayia explains. She said her dad even wanted to introduce Turkish coffee to the menu, but sometimes Ayia reminds him that too many options would be a lot to handle, especially for such a tiny shop. While the business takes pride in its cuisine and high-quality ingredients, they aim to please their customer base, even when authenticity has to be compromised. Even with the chicken fingers they sell, they serve them with “Toum” their homemade garlic sauce, throwing in some Middle Eastern aspects. 

It is evident that Al-Shami understands what their customers are looking for, and sometimes can change up or add menu items to maintain their following. Some of the current menu items did not even exist when the restaurant opened.

“In Syria, it’s like bizarre to mix meat and falafel inside the same sandwich, but our customers kept ordering it, so now we offer mixed wraps and combos,” Ayia says. 

Despite her plans of pursuing medicine, Ayia certainly has a lot of knowledge on how to successfully run a food business and seems to enjoy helping her father greatly. Ayia is undoubtedly a people person. Whether it’s interacting with customers, volunteering with seniors as a certified nursing assistant, or advocating for campus issues in student congress, she centers her work around helping those around her. 

The Tatari’s have maintained Al-Shami’s success for nearly two years on Thayer Street and has quickly become a student favorite for Middle-Eastern eats. Their prosperity can be attributed to the hard work and expertise of Amir Tatari, Ayia’s excellent time management skills, the support of the rest of the Tatari family, and the loyal student following the restaurant has gained. If you ever come across Al-Shami for lunch, don’t let the long line deter you. As you wait in line, admire the Persian rugs and pottery lining the walls, the smells of the fresh spices, and sizzling falafel, and strike up a conversation with Ayia. She is always happy to chat.