JewFro restaurant was inspired by the George Floyd protest movement

 Enjoy many American citizens, Ari Augenbaum, Trey Owens and Narine Hovnanian intently watched the protest movement that adopted the loss of life of George Floyd for the duration of the summer of 2020. Floyd’s loss of life sparked familiar discussions amongst the chums about the historic previous of speed and oppression in the United States.

The three restaurateurs, who gallop a most popular Virginia eatery known as Soul Taco, figured they would use meals to aid up healing, historic previous and, they hope, a diversified eating ride.

All over a gradual-night conversation at their Richmond restaurant, they made up our minds to launch JewFro, a pop-up-kind insist that fuses Jewish and African cuisines. (Richmond restaurants are originate for in-particular person eating, though JewFro affords takeout carrier as effectively.)

“JewFro,” Augenbaum said, “was born out of a conversation that I’m determined many American citizens had been having about the Black Lives Subject protests.”

Augenbaum, Owens and Hovnanian already had ride melding cuisines: Soul Taco combines Latin American flavors and Southern meals. Since its October 2018 opening, Soul Taco has loved a meteoric upward push, including being featured on a January 2020 episode of Meals Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

JewFro by day is a Jewish deli that makes a speciality of dwelling-cured meats and artisanal sandwiches with African spices. By night, the eatery affords up classic Jewish and Israeli dishes with African flair, as effectively as fresh takes on African dishes with Jewish flavors: grilled rooster marinated in South African Peri-Peri sauce over Israeli couscous, or Zigni (an Eritrean beef stew) brisket over matzah polenta with braised kale and stewed tomatoes.

A most modern Sunday brunch featured fresh baked challah with dwelling cured gravlax and Dukkah, the Egyptian nut and insist mix. Diners could well wash it down with a harissa mimosa, flavored with the Tunisian hot chile pepper paste.

While creating the menu, the three chums made an enticing discovery.

“After we started researching some of the dishes for this thought, we realized that diverse the ingredients and cooking strategies had been nearly an identical,” Augenbaum said. In actuality, “the similarities had been extra excellent than the variations.”

Augenbaum, a Jew from Maryland, credit score Owens, an African-American from Richmond, with the thought that in the rupture gave initiating to JewFro.

“Trey proposed that we pay homage to both of our cultures as a show of solidarity by meals,” Augenbaum recalled.

He and Hovnanian, an Armenian American, straight belief it was a mountainous thought. The similarities, they agreed, went previous delicacies.

“While two-thirds of our possession is white, all three of us come from a jam where our folk had been persecuted,” Augenbaum said.

They all believe years of ride in the restaurant and hospitality replace.

Hovnanian, whose folk had been born and raised in Iraq and Jordan, will not be any stranger to Center Eastern delicacies. From her folk she inherited a love for labneh, halvah and hummus, and she credit score her Southern California upbringing with exposing her to loads of cuisines. As well to her work as CEO at JewFro and Soul Taco, she runs two other restaurants and has both staunch property funding and occasion manufacturing companies.

Owens, JewFro’s director of operations, facets to his work on both naval supply ships and global cruise traces in fostering an passion in other cultures. He has spent the previous 15 years working in the restaurant replace. Owens also serves on Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s COVID-19 restaurant job force. Together together with his two industry companions, he participated in Black Lives Subject marches final summer.

Augenbaum was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household where his household saved kosher and he ate classic Ashkenazi fare love potato kugel and gefilte fish. A gig with a kosher caterer at the age of 13 in the rupture ended in a protracted time of labor in the foodservice replace, including running restaurants for celeb chef Bobby Flay and Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher. Alongside the design he picked up several awards from the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.

Augenbaum serves as JewFro’s senior culinary director, a device that lets in him to delight in his current curiosity: experimenting with extinct cuisines and novel recipes. He calls the resolution to combine Jewish and African fare “gallant.” The two cuisines, he says, are every now and then ever fused.

“We haven’t viewed any other restaurants doing this. I assume that the predominant explanation for that’s that African meals is no longer very excellent in American delicacies total,” said Augenbaum, who educated with Morou Outarra, an American chef who hails from the Ivory Cruise.

By difference, “Jewish delis are smartly-liked and Israeli delicacies has was very smartly-liked in the earlier couple of years with Michael Solomonov at the forefront of that movement,” he said, relating to the award-successful Philadelphia chef.

Nonetheless, “by design of Jewish meals on a worldly honest eating level, outside of the kosher world, there in actual fact is loads much less.”