OPENING THEIR doors this past spring in Suwanee Town Center, Raik Mediterranean has solidified itself as the go-to spot for fresh and authentic Middle Eastern food in the area and has garnered a loyal customer base any chef would be proud of. “We absolutely love it! Raik is an escape to the Crescent region with a beautiful atmosphere, a wonderful team, and a dining experience you cannot find anywhere else in the Southeast,” says Sean Q., a local patron dining at the restaurant on a Tuesday night. “We love it so much that we’ve been back seven times since we discovered it a little more than a month ago.” Town Center is an undeniably ideal location for any aspiring restaurateur, but ironically the idea to move in came from the community itself. “A lot of people from around the city opened our eyes about this location and they really wanted us to move here,” says Faiq Usman, head chef and owner. Originating from a former concept, the fast-casual Cafe Raik in Duluth, Raik Mediterranean is a higher-end twist on homemade Lebanese-Palestinian food, forged by fresh ingredients. Faiq Cafe Raik by himself for 10 years prior to this, but two years ago when their contract was up, they chose to forgo renewal. There was a new opportunity on the horizon, and with help from his uncle and brother-inlaw, the elevated full-service dining experience he had dreamt of became a financial possibility. “My uncle and brother-inlaw came in like, ‘Let’s do it and let’s go bigger,’” Faiq says. “They believe in the product, they believe in me and what we did, because we had pretty good reviews and proud, loyal customers.”
A Foundation in Family Raik simply wouldn’t be what it is without family. It is the foundation and the mindset from which Faiq approaches everything. “We are family-owned, family-run and we bring really authentic food — it’s not Americanized,” Faiq says. “We take the recipe from my grandma, my mom, like how we make it at home and we bring it to the restaurant.” Faiq never went to culinary school (he holds degrees in statistics and sociology) and he attributes everything he knows in the kitchen to the women in his life: his mom, his grandmother, and his mother-in-law. “I’m not like a chef. My expertise is just in Middle Eastern food and that’s really it. I know other stuff, but my expertise is in that specific region, specific cuisine. And I learned from how we cook at home.” To taste the food at Raik and to learn that the man behind the dish doesn’t consider himself a chef simply doesn’t equate. (His coworkers tell me he is far too humble.) If anything, it is that he is more than a chef, he is a leader in his community, a true family man. Faiq tells me that in his household they usually cook for a big family, as much as 10-15 people around the table. “That’s our culture: food.” “We share, we make a big pot for everybody, and we share,” Faiq says. “I think that’s one of the challenges for me, too, to take that big portion and make it individual.” That bodes well for a patron of Raik, where the servings are plentiful and fresh ingredients are the driving factor.
Locally Sourced Ingredients Take the lamb shank for example, a heap of a meal held together by a luscious leg of lamb braised in tomato pomegranate sauce that just falls off the bone into a bed of rice and carrots. While Faiq pursues the homemade feel to his dishes, the arrangements feel nothing short of professional. Captivatingly colorful dishes, dips, and flatbreads at the next table over entice you as your own order becomes increasingly indecisive. Luckily, this food is meant to be shared. Other staples are the hummus, falafel, and pita baked fresh daily. “Everything from A to Z, we make in-house,” Faiq tells me. “We do not buy anything pre-made, we source locally, even our meat.” Look for notes of cardamom, allspice, cloves, and cumin in the ground meat of their beef kabob; key spices of the region that serve as a thread-line throughout the cuisine. Or the chicken kabob, marinated in such spices for three days before being served fresh-to-order.
Craft Cocktails Faiq even features some traditional ingredients in the craft cocktails they offer at their fully stocked bar — a key differentiating feature from the Raik of the past. Try the 5 Spice Old Fashioned, in which they make the syrups from scratch imbued with allspice, cardamom, cloves, and more. The drink menu is carefully designed to be directly associated with the food. They’ve brought wine from the region, from Greece and Italy, and while the Middle East does not produce much liquor (arak is the only well-known variety), they have imported beer from Lebanon, one of the few they could find from back home. Along with the local beers of Georgia, Faiq has made an effort to expand his offerings in order to assimilate cultures.
Multiple Mediterranean Influences Just like his menu is a culmination of many cuisines throughout the Mediterranean/Middle East — not tied down to one delineation of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, or Israeli — Faiq’s worldview was formed by multiple influences. “In Palestine, we have Christians, we have Muslim, we have Jews,” says Faiq, a native of the region. “If you go to Jerusalem and you could see different neighbors, who have different names, different cultures in the same city. That’s why we have those relationships between different religions. We have one nation, that does not divide us; it is the opposite.” Raik is a family restaurant in every sense, and like family, food is what brings us together. Faiq tells stories of customers who celebrated the birth of their son at the cafe and returned when the boy was seven years old. Once, a woman came to the cafe with a pregnancy craving for falafel, but she had a soybean allergy, so Faiq made her a special pot with different oil. “We gave her the falafel even one day before she gave birth,” Faiq says. Just two months ago, that same woman returned to the new restaurant with her now six-yearold daughter. Faiq’s reverence for family and tradition translates directly into the food and hospitality at Raik. Despite a natural eye for curating everything from the menu to the ambience, Faiq claims he got his start in restaurants by accident. “I finished my degree and found a job in the food industry and that’s what attracted me there; more energetic, you meet a lot of people every day, different people, different backgrounds.” And that’s where the sociology degree comes into play. While his devotion to tradition allows him to find his place, his openness to other cultures allows him to stand out. “To get to the USA, to a new culture, new people — sociology helped me to understand other cultures, to know how everything works. It’s a little bit different here; even the consumer, the service, even the quality, all that stuff is different. I think I learned a little bit faster because I’m open to other cultures, other ideas, which has helped me a little bit.” Faiq came to the U.S. from his birthplace Palestine in 2010 to help his brother run a restaurant in Michigan. His wife, whom he met through mutual friends, lived in Atlanta before they met, but is originally from Nazareth near his own family.
After they got married, the couple lived in Palestine for a year, but they missed her family, and when they would visit them in Atlanta his motherin- law would complain that there was nowhere for them to go out to eat. “That’s what convinced me to come here,” Faiq says, “to be close to the family and to start a new adventure.” That adventure was Cafe Raik, a family name that means multitudes to Faiq. The namesake comes from Faiq’s oldest brother who passed away in 1996, long before the cafe had opened. Another of his brothers suggested the name when they were getting started and they agreed it sounded right. “It has meant a lot for me because it’s my brother and he passed away and just to honor him,” Faiq says. “I called my son after his name and my son was born one month after we opened.” That is what makes Raik different. Between the origin story of the restaurant, the homemade feel of the dishes, and the humility of its leader, the dining experience is nothing if not driven by familial love. “We make lots of trips to Charleston to visit our son and enjoy the many great restaurants in Charleston, so we were very excited to bring our son and his girlfriend to Raik” says Sean Q. Unfortunately, when the family tried to go on Sunday the restaurant was closed for a birthday party, so their son moved his flight and stayed in town two extra days just to go. “They loved it. We got more time together and enjoyed an incredible meal that we couldn’t get in Charleston.” Already on its way to becoming a staple in Town Center, Raik is more equipped than ever to provide authentic Middle Eastern cuisine to a community that is ready for it.
Raik Mediterranean is located at 400 Buford Hwy.
N.E. in Suwanee. For more information, go to RaikMediterranean.com or call 678-926-3917.
