Salima Specialties Provides Cham Cuisine to Skyway

The menu at Salima Specialties in Skyway phone calls by itself Pan-Asian, seemingly featuring Malaysian roti canai, Vietnamese banh mi, and Indian lassi beverages. But the dishes truly all come from a one culture, Cham, a largely Muslim Indigenous people from Southeast Asia. When Nurhaliza Mohamath, who goes by Liza, opened the restaurant in March 2022 with her mother and father, Salima and Asari, she observed herself pushing the family to consider about what Cham delicacies is. Following a life span of curiosity about her have identity, she now confidently describes the foods at her restaurant as Cham. “It’s Cham for the reason that our men and women manufactured it our very own, we have our have twist to it,” she claims.

Cham foods fluidly crisscrosses borders, sometimes hunting like that of Vietnam, in which all three Mohamaths had been born, or Malaysia, the country whose cuisine Salima uncovered to cook dinner performing at her oldest sister’s cafe in the village she grew up in. Other situations, it borrows from about the Muslim world, bringing in flavors from North Africa or the Center East.

Chona Kasinger/Eater Seattle

In 2005, the Mohamaths opened Salima Cafe on MLK Jr. Boulevard, where by Salima cooked a substantial menu of Southeast Asian halal cuisine her peanut sauce from that restaurant gained a track record that perseveres to this day. The location also grew to become a collecting issue for Seattle’s Cham neighborhood and Muslims from all about who relished the scarce possibility to consume halal variations of pork-weighty nearby favorites, like Vietnamese food items.

Sadly, in 2009, the mixture of many years of light rail building closing down the road in entrance of the cafe and the 2008 economic economic downturn place the cafe out of organization. “It was a massive reduction for my household, for the community,” suggests Liza.

Before long immediately after, the pair commenced doing work at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service, where they however operate — Asari controlling routine maintenance and Salima as the chef (all a few Mohamaths nevertheless do the job their full-time positions in addition to jogging the cafe). But in the extra than a ten years because closing their restaurant, Salima and Asari under no circumstances stopped dreaming of opening one more a single.

Chona Kasinger/Eater Seattle

Last yr, Liza graduated from college or university and joined her dad and mom in dreaming of a cafe, looking at additional relaxed tips that could attraction to more youthful generations. When Salima not too long ago found out the previous Catfish Corner place was readily available, she knew it was time to act. In three days of making contact with the landlord and outlining the strategy, the Mohamaths signed a lease on the house.

They carefully chose inexpensive menu items for people on tighter budgets but also bundled pricier selections that showcase Salima’s expertise, like the tender oxtail soup. Salima’s popular peanut sauce and rooster satay skewers returned, together with delicate dishes for smaller youngsters, brightly coloured beverages and snack food stuff for young adults, and standard Cham flavors for the elders. “There’s intention at the rear of everything,” Liza claims.

For beverages, Salima Specialties serves conventional Malaysian teh tarik (pulled tea) and bandung (a rose syrup consume) but also Liza’s possess matcha cookie beverage creation, inspired by Oreo beverages and Hello Panda cookies. The banh mi and pho may well appear to be common to Seattleites versed in Vietnamese foods, but right here, everything is halal, so there’s no pork, a prerequisite that led to the Mohamaths building all the meats — hen ham, vegan ham, and beef meatballs — in-home. They get in touch with their big stuffed steamed buns that fill the deli scenario in the entrance “Cham bao,” a enjoy on humbow (the title that most of Seattle arrived to use for Chinese-model loaded, stuffed buns), but produced with no pork. Instead, the fluffy dough wraps close to shrimp, jicama, wood ear mushrooms, carrots, and a quail egg, cooked in the a single component Liza names as quintessentially Cham: toasted coconut milk. Sweet and smoky, it brings the flavors in the bao collectively in a way exceptional to Cham lifestyle.

Chona Kasinger/ Eater Seattle

Chona Kasinger/Eater Seattle

In the earlier cafe, Liza recounts, Salima felt like she was running in the dim as a the latest immigrant, that she and her partner have been alone, just them with every little thing on their shoulders. At Salima Specialties, the reverse is correct. “Now, she has group on her facet,” Liza suggests.

Liza estimates about 50 percent their company is Cham people today. South Seattle and King County have a huge Cham populace, and Liza describes the mobile household parks driving Skyway’s fuel stations as “literally Cham villages.” Still entry to Cham cuisine has pale in the pandemic, suggests Liza. “A large amount of our elders who have historically cooked and offered food out of their kitchens — that is what we had been raised on — individuals people have retired or handed on.” Salima Specialties, the reincarnation of her parents’ desire, hopes to carry it again. “Cham folks can occur right here and experience very pleased,” Liza claims. “You can suggest this cafe you can style Cham food here.”

Chona Kasinger/Eater Seattle

Liza was in elementary university when they had the initial restaurant and fondly remembers her dad hand-providing her lunches of rooster with rice and fish sauce. But if she reported she was from Vietnam, classmates would question why her relatives did not eat pork, why they wore headscarves, why she was distinct from everyone. It fed into Liza’s individual battle to realize her identity and where by they came from. But Salima’s cooking combatted all those questions for Liza: the foodstuff her household ate, what they served in their restaurant and to their own neighborhood, represented her cultural wealth, as it had for generations. “Our relatives truly values understanding the cuisine.”

It is quick for people today to say that their meals isn’t Cham because it is Malaysian, or Vietnamese, Liza observes, but she shuts that criticism down. “I’m definitely passionate about reclaiming what our tradition usually means,” claims Liza. “It’s Cham due to the fact we made it.”