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Feast World Kitchen Offers Takeout From Around The World

feastworldkitchen.org

Last fall, we brought you the story of Feast World Kitchen, a new Spokane restaurant featuring a rotating menu from immigrant and refugee chefs. As part of our occasional series, Refugee Stories, we followed up to see how Feast is faring amid the coronavirus crisis. 

The plan was to open Feast World Kitchen as a take out and counter service restaurant in the old Sushi Yama building at Third and Cedar in downtown Spokane. But as with many well laid plans, there were hurdles to overcome this spring.

“The building was kind of old. It needed construction, and it has many issues. We started doing some stuff in the building, but with COVID-19 nobody can just work and do his job. So we had to stop. The good thing was that the kitchen was done and licensed so the work is just outside.”

That’s Maisa Abudyha, a former refugee from Jordan who is now a board member and head chef at Feast. She says the restaurant was able to open for take out two days per week beginning in March and since then, they’ve been adding more chefs to their rotating lineup. As head chef, Maisa works alongside other chefs to help them scale up their recipes and cook in a commercial setting. 

“I help to cook Afghani food, from Bangladesh, from Tanzania, there are maybe three or four countries from Africa. Mexican! Can you imagine? I’m cooking Mexican, I can’t even speak Spanish a little bit.”

In fact, they’ve had so much interest that they’ve just added Sunday lunch and dinner menus in addition to their usual Friday and Saturday dinner lineup. 

One of the regular rotating chefs is Suzanne Alrahma who has lived in Spokane since 2009. She says sharing those cultures from all over the world with the community is part of Feast’s mission. 

“Many people don’t know anything about different cultures, their food. Every time I cook, I try to bring my traditional food. My Jordanian culture food.”

Head chef Maisa Abudyha, says that the money chefs earn from cooking for Feast World Kitchen is especially important now as many have lost other sources of income due to the coronavirus crisis.

“It’s a hard time for many families, but the Spokane community is really amazing. To help other families who are struggling now and don’t have any income. It is really good.”

Feast World Kitchen is open for takeout Friday through Sunday. You can find each week’s menu with food from cultures around the world at www.feastworldkitchen.org.

Chris Maccini previously worked at SPR as Morning Edition host and producing arts and special programming such as The Bookshelf, Poetry Moment, Northwest Arts Review, special features and more.
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