A pair of Syrians have created a community that supports immigrants and vulnerable people in Rome, sharing the flavors of a homeland torn by civil war.
Founded in 2018 as a “humanitarian catering service,” HummusTown originally aimed to raise funds for families and friends in Syria.
It has since become a successful small business that has grown from sending remittances to helping new immigrants integrate into Italy, while gaining a steady following in Rome’s food scene.
As the war in Syria continued, Shaza Saker, a former UN employee living in Rome, and Joumana Farho, who worked as her cook, wanted to find a way to help people at home. Farho, 48, brought her “divine” cooking, while Saker, 49, networked.
“I told him, ‘Let’s start inviting people to dinner… and whatever we get from these dinners we’ll send to Syria,” Saker said. “My house had become something like, you know, a restaurant.” , a home restaurant. But it was funny.
The nonprofit that started with 45,000 euros ($48,670) raised through crowdfunding now employs 13 full-time and 10 part-time people at its kitchen kiosk near Rome’s train station and in a small bistro, with plans to open a restaurant.
The expanded group now also organizes cooking classes, cultural events and summer snacks, as well as catering for events in the Italian capital.
Every month they donate food to homeless people and last year they raised 40,000 euros for the victims of the earthquakes that hit Syria on February 6, 2023 with the loss of thousands of lives.
As more refugees arrived in Rome, the two shifted their focus to providing work and a support network to Syrian asylum seekers, eventually expanding their mission to all vulnerable people, including Italians.
Among them is Mayyada al-Amrani, a Palestinian woman who fled Gaza with her eldest daughter, who is receiving cancer treatment. She spends her days rolling traditional spiced rice in grape leaves, working alongside four other cooks of Syrian and Palestinian origin. While she can earn money to support herself and her daughter in Italy, she worries about her five other children in Gaza, her youngest not yet nine months old.
“They are surviving,” he said. “They struggle and suffer mainly because of (the lack of) water.”
Fadi Salem, now director of HummusTown, is a Syrian refugee from Damascus who arrived in Rome in 2022 after living in Lebanon for seven years. Salem discovered humanitarian catering through Rome’s Syrian community and said it slowly became like family to him.
“I found integration through HummusTown instead of finding it through migration centers,” he said. “Because from my position here I talk to a lot of Italian and foreign clients, that’s why I practice my Italian, English and Arabic every day,” she noted.
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