“We cook the way our grandmothers did. Carefully.”

Teta Mariam pounded chickpeas in a stone mortar she'd carried from the village, ground sesame in a battered hand-mill, and refused to let anyone — even her grandson — touch the lemon until she said so. Rami stood beside her on a wooden milk crate, eleven years old, learning that a kitchen is a kind of patience.

He left for Paris at twenty. Staged through Le Cinq, then Septime, then a tiny bistro in the eleventh where the chef refused to put butter in anything. He came home to Lebanon six years later and apprenticed under a man who only made one dish — kibbeh nayyeh — and only made it on Saturdays.

In 2014 he moved to Ottawa with Nayla. They lived above a hardware store on Bank Street for three years, saving every dollar. In 2017 they opened the doors at 242 Elgin with thirty-two seats, one open kitchen, and a list of farmers Rami had drawn up by hand on the back of a takeout menu.

Nine years on, the bread is still rolled by hand each afternoon. The lamb still comes from Beretta. The wine list — eighty bottles — is still curated by his brother Salim, who picks every pairing himself. Teta Mariam died in 2019. The hummus tastes the same.