6 Questions with Reem Assil of Reem's California on Arab Street Food, Cultural Appropriation, & Empowering Restaurant Workers

Read Time: 12 min

By Sophie Braker

Reem Assil is the founder of Reem’s California, an Arab street corner bakery dedicated to community building, social justice, and sustainability. Best Served learned about Reem through Sicily Sierra and Nite Yun, all members of La Cocina, a womens’ food business incubator program. A true entrepreneur, Reem did the interview for this article from her car. Watch the videocast to learn more: BSP382: Reem Assil of Reem's California on Food Incubators, Representing Arab Food Culture, Systemic Change In Restaurant Industry. 

First restaurant job?

My first job in the restaurant hospitality industry was way back. I put myself through college working as a barista and working front of house in restaurants. My first official job while I was in culinary school was in Arizmendi-Emeryville Bakery and Pizzeria. It’s a worker owned co-operative bakery. It’s amazing. It’s funny because at that time it was really highly competitive to get into the Arizmendi bakeries. There were like a hundred fifteen applicants for eight spots. I was like ”You have to take me for this job. I’m only three months into culinary school.” I really got them on the shared values. I did bring in a few of my favorite muffins and scones from the Cheeseboard cookbook. 

What’s a food / drink you always have on hand at home?

I always have a loaf of bread. That’s pretty obvious and cliche. Everything from sourdough baguettes to pita that I can whip out and put anything and everything on it. My business was built on bread. I am the bread missionary. 

What's one Arab food that represents your culture which more people need to know about?

I think bread is obviously a central component of our cuisine. But if you want to understand my culture and my people, particularly folks who live on the fertile crescent, it would definitely be Za’atar. I think it's something that’s become a fad word and people don’t really understand what it is.

Arabs are weird. We use the word for the plant and the spice mix. The plant is an ancient plant. It's a biblical plant. It represents our connection to the land. My ancestors are rural people. Being able to cultivate from the land. It's also a superfood. It has antiseptic qualities. There’s an old wives tale that it improves your memory. Moms used to give it to their kids before they had big tests. No Za’atar mix is alike. They are different because of the terroir. Every plant has its element depending on where it's grown. You can tell the methodologies people have used to dry it. There’s variations of the plant as well. When that plant is mixed with the sumac berry and sesame seed, it has this amazing trifecta of savory, tart, and nutty flavors. Then you submerge it in olive oil, and it’s just so good. I wanted to use fans and put the scent out of Za’atar to lure people in. Food is our language. People might not know it unless you hit them with all the senses. Reems is all about show don’t tell. 

Where do you think we’re at now with cultural appropriation vs cultural appreciation in food?

I think it's all contextual. People's understanding of different foodways is so far more advanced than it was five years ago when I came on the scene. I coined my food as Arab food when no one knew what Arab food was. Even though Arabs have been part of the culinary fabric of this country for a long time. That's changing with my generation of chefs who are reclaiming foods. Because in a vacuum people are going to claim food. That reclamation of food is really helpful.

I have a more nuanced view of ownership. For me, it's about power and profit and privilege. I think it's fine to appreciate food so long as the people centered in that story are the people who have cultivated that food and made that food. The problem I have with foodways is people have been cut out of that story. Invisiblized and that just adds to the racist nature of this country. Food is one way that people express that racism. If people are profiting off of their own foodways and have access to their own foodways then why not other people appreciate that? I see a lot more partnerships, folks of color at the center of their foodways. Even in partnership with other folks who may not be from that culture.

We still have a ways to go. As I said in Ugly Delicious, it hasn’t changed. The white male chef can still go to any country of his choosing, get inspired, and come back to make lots of money off of that inspiration without giving homage or any material benefit to the people that made that food. I am hopeful with this generation of chefs. 

How does your work as a community and labor organizer inform how you have developed Reem's workplace?

So much. I think that from the very onset of building Reems, I had a naive outlook of what I wanted to build. It was very sobering actually entering the realities of capitalism. They are amplified in the food industry to an extreme that I wasn’t aware of. The core tenant of organizing is providing a transformative space for people to find their voice so they can have command over their own destiny. It's not just to bring people together to fight something. It's to bring people together so they can find their collective voice so they can transform their livelihoods. That is a core tenant of Reems, we see people first. We see people, particularly people who have been robbed of their voice and their agency. We teach them how to unlearn that stuff. 

This industry is the perfect breeding ground for revolution because it's made up of Black, Indigenous, Folks of Color. There are a lot of opportunities. For whatever reason, the labor movement hasn't galvanized those folks. There's the farm workers movement back in the day that did that. At least within the restaurant space at Reems we think that if we center workers they are going to come for more than just their livelihoods. They will come to better their own lives, to better the lives around them, to build leadership skills. That will yield better businesses. That’s the ethos. Even with the external factors that we can’t control. 

What can new restaurateurs learn from your approach to bring food, community, and social justice to their restaurant?

I love the concept of building it from the beginning. Not that I completely understood what I was doing in the beginning but the fact that we are trying to transition into a worker owned space is much harder than if we started as a worker owned space. So build your foundation and lift up those people who have been loyal to you are big ones. Impart confidence in them even when they don’t have confidence in themselves.

Open book management has been a big piece of our work at Reems. This country and the forces that are trying to pit people against one other make us weird about money. Money is just currency. It's the way we take care of one other. Getting more comfortable talking about money is important at Reems. Just the act of transparency instills trust. Whether we are doing badly or doing well, that trust adds stability to the business. I come from a popular education background so that helps my understanding of the numbers. We have our accountant create the numbers for us. We also had a partnership with a bunch of different organizations for our apprenticeship program. A program for our workers to prepare to be worker owners. Part of the co-op management style is the open book management. It's the idea that you can’t just give people power and governance if you don’t educate them to understand the numbers so they feel equipped to have an opinion. 

This one is the hard one but seeing the collective over the individual. I hesitate to say this because the restaurant culture talks about everyone being a family, everyone being in this together. I don’t mean it that way. We all have different circumstances. The path of a good restaurant owner is to really understand the different circumstances that their employees have. And work to meet them where they are at. There is no cookie cutter way to take care of people. The only way to know how to take care of people is to listen to them.

We have worked closely with the US Federation of Worker Co-Ops. We worked with this amazing consulting agency called Colmenar Cooperative Consulting. It's three women. They work primarily with latinx/latina identified folks. One other thing about the support that we got which is really relevant to restaurant people is language justice. This is a concept that I have learned a lot more about in the last fifteen months. We invested a lot in making sure that everyone can speak in the language that is comfortable to them. That opens so many avenues for wisdom and collaboration. Our monolingual Spanish speaking employees have really benefited from that. We have interpretation at all of our meetings. It levels the playing field. I think it’s really worth the investment.

Photo credit to Andria Lo

Reem Assil is a Palestinian-Syrian chef based in Oakland, California and founder of Reem’s California, a nationally acclaimed restaurant in Oakland and San Francisco, inspired by Arab street corner bakeries and the vibrant communities that surround them. Reem has garnered an array of accolades in the culinary world, including James Beard Semifinalist nods for Best Chef: West (2018-19) and Outstanding Chef (2022). She is a graduate of the competitive food business incubator program, La Cocina, business leadership program Centro Community Partners, and Oakland-based business accelerator program ICA: Fund Good Jobs.

Before dedicating herself to a culinary career, Reem spent over a decade as a community and labor organizer, building leadership in workers and residents to fight for living wages, affordable housing, and a voice in their jobs and their neighborhoods. Reem was a 2021 Emerson Collective Fellow to incubate Sumoud, a replicable worker-ownership apprenticeship program equipping food-service workers with the tools they need to make meaningful, systemic change in the restaurant industry and beyond.

Reem’s newest book, Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora, is a collection of 100+ bright, bold recipes influenced by the vibrant flavors and convivial culture of the Arab world, filled with moving personal essays on food, family, and identity and mixed with a pinch of California cool.

Reem sits at the intersection of her three passions: food, community, and social justice. She uses food to invoke the central virtue of her Arab culture ⁠— hospitality ⁠— to build strong, resilient, and connected community.