a final mamnoon to you, Seattle

mamnoon means thankful in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.  It couldn’t be a more apt name for the reception and community engagement we’ve had in the last 13 years.  We’ve basked in and shared our gratitude with you in the best way we know how.  Sunday Sept 14th will be mamnoon’s last service and will be closing its doors thereafter. Thank you for everything, Seattle.  

From the day we opened our doors, we welcomed you into the totality of our lives: the warmth of our culture, the depth of our cuisine, our cultural tastes, and the realities of our war-torn homes.

We couldn’t have embarked on this beautiful ride without you taking us in for who we are. By the summer of 2012, we were feverishly deep in the process of asking ourselves an existential question about Lebanese, Syrian  and Persian cuisines tied to their futures in Seattle.

The earliest mama group kitchen staff spent an entire summer in our founders Racha and Wassef Haroun’s kitchen, the days wafting between the breezy, crisp days of early Seattle spring, through the muggiest days of the summer.

Lording over the menu ideation and every move of the early chefs were Wassilah Haroun, Wassef’s mother, and Ferechteh Barazi, Racha’s mother. They went through traditional cooking preparations for the kind of Iranian food that Racha’s mother grew up with in Tehran like Loubia Polow, and the regional Syrian dishes from Hama like Bateresh that Ferechteh adopted along with her new homeland when she married Samir Barazi, Racha’s father. 

In a lovingly militant way, Wassilah guided chefs through cooking techniques tied to coastal, northern Syrian and Lebanese Beiruti style, showing how to mold kibbeh and roll dolmeh, infusing infectious hospitality into the process — because the cuisines and cultures don’t exist without it. Celebrated Lebanese best selling cookbook author and chef Barbara Masaad joined in on the action, spending endless hours with Racha, Wassef, the grandmas and the early mama team in the kitchen, teaching, testing, and tweaking.

The stress was high because the details that needed to be absorbed were so granular — how finely to chop the parsley in tabbouleh, the right intuition for salting certain dishes, and the cultural importance of sweet and salty interplay in Iranian rice dishes with raisins. 

Our team studied the importance of spices like za’atar, or the critical role of olive oil and pita and the holistic, ancient nature of pickling and preservation techniques. We wanted to share how the food came from simple roots — bread is life as we say — with at times complex, storied techniques loaded with regional and family history.

When starting mamnoon, we decided which rules to abide by, and which rules we’d break, over and over again, in the vein of forging something new. With the war in Syria reaching a fever pitch, our family couldn’t travel back and mamnoon became our new dream home — peering into the past and future— that we couldn’t wait to welcome you into.

It left us asking ourselves: how much of our traditions and our ancestors’ traditions would we bring into mamnoon? And how much would we use the bounty in our backyard — beautiful legumes, wild seafood and varieties of mushrooms and vegetables that we never held in Syria or Lebanon — to adapt our cuisines and move things forward?

Mamnoon was a blueprint of our migratory lives that we shared with you, Seattle. And we are endlessly lucky that for so many years, you let us into your lives too.

Our incredible chefs added their magic into the mix, our front of house teams believed in the same romanticism of hospitality, and local artists and artisans added their touches all over our restaurant — from tables crafted by Tina Randolph, interior design by Eric Cobb, to glassblown lights sourced in Syrian souks by Racha Haroun, or of course, the mysterious flying chickens.

Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, dates, breakups, galentine’s, casual dinners to spill the tea, you chose mamnoon over and over to freeze in time your big moments and small moments too. The meaning of our name, “thankful,” and “grateful,” in Arabic and Farsi, could not resonate more as we close our doors. More than the city has been our home, the restaurant was the vein that pumped into our local community and our families in Lebanon and Syria.

Mamnoon was also your window into our world. It was important for us to connect Seattleites to the struggles of people in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, and connect our global communities to Seattle. And to be a part of a first wave of forward-thinking Levantine restaurants that allowed the world to understand our people as resilient, culturally proud, and creative people.

The story of our people as Syrians is one of resilience. Wassef and Racha’s parents found home again and again after surviving war and persecution, and Wassef and Racha did the same in Seattle. Mamnoon became not only an emblem of that adaptiveness our people are forced to navigate this world with, it also became a hub for unbridled creative expression.

Arab art from Racha’s favorite artists flanked the walls, and tasteful Arabic music both new and old flooded the airwaves, and we crafted a reserve wine with Chateau Ixsir from the mountains of Lebanon that we exclusively served in Seattle. We like to think that while we could make it work, we linked the beauty of our worlds together—with the food as the main attraction. 

We were honored time and time again by the reception of our touch to the city, winning Seattle Met’s Best New Restaurant in 2013, and scoring a visit from the late, legendary Anthony Bourdain in 2017. The accolades warmed our hearts, but your love powered us through the end.

Thank you to every chef and back of house teammates that enriched and educated our kitchens, every front of house staff member that kept the ship sailing smoothly and dazzled guests, thank you to every team member who made operations click behind the scenes, and thank you to everyone who was part of the team work that made the dream work. We couldn’t have done any of this without every single person who worked at mamnoon, and made us fall in love with it even more. Mamnoon to you.

Ultimately, the story is not ending, but moving onto a new chapter. Our mamnoon fine foods mezze products are sold at over 100 markets in Seattle, Washington and Oregon, which was our way of extending our food to your table during the pandemic. We’d love to continue to be a part of your table spread. Additionally, mbar will still be the place for you to take it to the top until November 1st.

With eternal love from the Haroun family – mamnoon to you Seattle! Look out for an announcement about some of our former chefs joining us at mamnoon in our last weeks, we will see you soon Seattle.

xo-mama