The owners of a new Yemeni restaurant want you to know there is more to Yemen than war and poverty.
Hadramout, located at 3200 N. Holland-Sylvania Rd., opened Nov. 8. The restaurant is the first Yemeni restaurant in Toledo, offering Middle Eastern foods like hummus, baba ghanoush, and fattoush as well as Yemeni foods such as haneeth, mandi, and masoub.
Co-owner Mahmood Meqdad said the restaurant is named after Hadhramaut, a geographic region in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. It is also where he is from.
“My mission is to show people our culture and our food,” Mr. Meqdad said. “This was my dream since day one coming here to the United States.”
Mr. Meqdad said he first came to America in 2010 after deciding to try to fulfill his late father’s wish.
“My father, Abdulaziz Meqdad, wanted to be a pharmacist when he was young,” Mr. Meqdad said. “His dream for me was to see me become a pharmacist. So I came to this country to learn English first.”
Mr. Meqdad went to Chicago in 2010, where he spent a few months learning the language. He then moved to Houston for a while. Mr. Meqdad was then accepted at the University of Toledo in 2014.