(This post is excerpted from Scene Dining Editor Doug Trattner’s weekly CLE Bites newsletter. Want more stories like this directly in your inbox every Saturday morning? Subscribe here.)
One of the main reasons that family businesses fail is a lack of interest by the next generation to assume responsibility. We’ve seen that plight play out time and time again, especially with respect to ethnic restaurants. Why peddle pierogi when you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a freewheeling influencer.
That was almost the fate of Falafel Café, a Lebanese restaurant with nearly 30 years under its belt.
“Mom said, the lease is ending, I’m tired, I’m over it,” explains Sirjoon Elassal.
And why shouldn’t she be? After 18 years in a prominent corner location in University Circle, Hani and Mae Elassal were forced out of their spot by UCI and left scrambling to secure a new location. And then Hani passed away, leaving Mae a widow. But Mae persevered and eventually reopened Falafel Café in a less visible spot at Uptown.
But now, six years later, Mae is ready to retire.
And who should come to her and her restaurant’s rescue but the prodigal son, back home following professional careers in New York and Denver.
“I’ve been in the industry my whole life,” he says. “I’m pretty equipped to take this restaurant over. And not in the way of just taking it over.”
Elassal received his master’s degree in organizational psychology with a specific focus on hospitality. He’s held most of the positions a restaurant has to offer, and he grew up alongside the family business. Falafel Café started out as Cedar Deli, a nebulous name for a Middle Eastern restaurant. The original spot opened in South Euclid in 1998, at a time when falafel, shawarma and fatayer were still plenty exotic sounding.
The family eventually changed the name and opened the new spot in University Circle, long before the developers sunk their claws into the area. Falafel Café did so well, in fact, that the Elassals busted down a wall to expand the restaurant. But now, thanks to a forced move, the restaurant is tucked away down a pretend alleyway in a manufactured neighborhood. Such is life.
To prepare Falafel Café for its next chapter, Elassal will lock the front doors and tackle a complete overhaul of the space and the menu. The last day will be June 7 and the reopening should occur in early August.
“I’m decolonizing the restaurant, bringing back the Lebanese authenticity,” Elassal explains. “We don’t want to serve corporate slop. We want to serve really good authentic food.”
Elassal says that his parents did what a lot of restaurant owners of their generation did: expand the menu in an effort to appeal to the widest possible audience. For them, that meant serving both falafel and gyros, baba ghanoush and cheese Phillys, spinach pies and hamburgers.
When Falafel Café reopens in time for the fall semester, it will do so with a focused, committed and streamlined menu. The interior will showcase the restaurant’s rich history while bringing back a feature from its earliest days as Cedar Deli, a retail section boasting Middle Eastern pantry goods.
Elassal says that he is excited to get started and optimistic about the restaurant’s future.
“I wanted to get away from the family restaurant for so long and then I got over myself,” he says. “The restaurant is such a great opportunity, not only to flex culinary stuff but also to have community, to work with other businesses. I’m in such a fortunate position.”
Now that Elassal has signed a new lease, it’s time for mom to move on to the next chapter of her life as the “Historian of Falafel,” he adds.
“She is super excited. She has wanted this for us for a long time. The hope is to let her go and enjoy herself and enjoy the world and let the restaurant be the restaurant.”
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