“My mom and her family fled religious persecution in Egypt, ending up in Demopolis, Alabama, where she met my dad and where I was raised. When I was growing up, my [granddad], who didn’t speak a lot of English, connected “My mom’s family name is Abadir, but they changed it when they got to the United States. I’ve always thought it was beautiful, so I reclaimed it.” “Abadir’s blends Arab ingredients into more familiar packages: dates in my chocolate chip cookies, tahini in my orange-honey rolls, and coriander with strawberries in my cornmeal pound cake. I grew up enjoying Southern and Egyptian dishes, so playing with the cuisines together feels natural.” “It’s been fun to see people fall in love with these flavors, and kind of surprising, too, that some of my really traditional items, like , an intensely yellow Lebanese turmeric cake, are the ones people now want the most.” “I put emphasis on nutritionally rich and seasonal ingredients. Not diet food. But natural, simple, and wholesome, like honey, fruit, and whole-grain flours. Taste matters, but I hope to get others thinking about nourishing their bodies, too.” “I wanted to do more than make food and sell it, so I founded Black Belt Food Project, a nonprofit focused on education and increased access to good food. We’re launching programming like hands-on cooking and nutrition classes. It’s not to tell people how or what to eat, but to improve the understanding of what we’re consuming and why.” “Our new space means an expansion of everything I’ve been doing. Abadir’s has been in my heart a long time. It feels really good to see what it’s becoming.”
