THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9511300058
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 211 lines
TWO DECADES back, Iranian immigrant Fouad Mohit made his first stop in Norfolk at a diner on Granby Street.
The night was dark as an ayatollah's mood, and the diner wasn't much brighter. Mohit, who had come direct from New York City, was surprised at the joylessness of the joint. The two or three downcast customers bent over their plates like penitents at a soup kitchen.
Where was the bubbling banter he had become accustomed to in the Big Apple? Where were the joking counterfolk, cracking wise and warm as they squeezed out fresh fruit juice? Where were the rich scents of fresh citrus and cake that sifted up and out into the crackling communal air?
Come to think of it, ``fresh'' was not an adjective that sprang immediately to mind in this place. The food he saw was greasy, and so was the menu that announced it. No longer hungry, Mohit opted diplomatically for a cup of black coffee.
``What couldn't I do with this place,'' he mused, ``if only it were mine?''
Seventeen years later, it was.
In 1993, having steam-hosed and Ajaxed the place into scrubbed submission, Mohit opened Tabouli, Mediterranean and vegetarian cuisine, at 4140 Granby St.
Perhaps it had something to do with kismet, the Middle Eastern notion of destiny.
``It is the little accidents that make things happen,'' observed Mohit, dicing parsley in the kitchen.
Around him, Tabouli bloomed. He has just renovated his mint cool, green-and-white establishment to eliminate the counter and add floor space. There are 32 chairs at eight tables, geometrically arranged about an appealing display of pale honey-rife baklava.
Said regular customer Amsu Jabbar, 31, a Norfolk electronics technician: ``I like the service. I like the food. I like the owner!''
That's the overwhelming consensus among Tabouli's returning clientele.
``I could charge a lot and run fancy ads,'' said Mohit. ``Or I can be reasonable and let word-of-mouth do the advertising. So far, everything I have done is word-of-mouth.''
And the word is good.
``I can't give a greater compliment,'' said Norfolk attorney Peter G. Decker Jr., 61, of Middle Eastern heritage, ``than that Fouad's tabouli compares very well with my mother's.''
The word comes at a time when members of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C., are reporting that the yearly health-care costs of eating meat are comparable to the estimated $50 billion spent annually to treat illnesses related to smoking. Their report in the current issue of Preventative Medicine reiterates the benefits of a vegetarian diet. And new dietary guidelines for Americans issued by the National Academy of Sciences say amen.
But you can have a hamburger at Tabouli - fashioned from fatless chopped sirloin. Broiled to taste. With feta cheese.
Better you should try the festive dish that gives the restaurant its name, tabouli - finely chopped parsley, scallions and minced tomatoes, mixed with cracked wheat and dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and herbs.
This stuff hits the habitual meat-eater like a hundred-watt bulb in a thought balloon. It's appetizing, flavorful and astringent. Tonia Graves, 30, one of the two waitresses at Tabouli, has the definitive statement on the fare:
``It's fresh, it's healthy, and it's pretty,'' she said. ``It tastes good, too, after you get past the funny names.''
Baba ganoosh - baked eggplant, tahini (sesame seed paste) and garlic. Hummus - cooked chickpeas, tahini, herbs and garlic. Booroni - homemade yogurt spinach, garlic and red pepper.
Plus a wide assortment of pizzas, pastas and kebabs.
All personally superintended by boss, chef and omnipresent staff Mohit.
``Basically, I'm willing to put in 16 hours a day here, six days a week,'' he explained. ``That's the only way I know. The work part is to keep quality control; it also has to do with the marketing.
``If the food is to be promoted, I do the promoting.''
In person. Smiling and talking amid zingo ingredients, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday, ``a sumptuous meal in a beautiful dining room.'' Like in New York.
``The customers enjoy knowing I'm here,'' said Mohit. ``I greet them and feed them and make sure they enjoy themselves. They come back and bring their families.'' COMING TO AMERICA
At a fit 5-feet-11, 160 pounds, 48-year-old Mohit is a walking ad for his menu, which is made up of the food he has always preferred at home.
``I offer a sampling of things that have been around for thousands of years,'' he said. ``My family keep a similar diet, though we're not strict vegetarians. We thought there would be a good market in this area for a restaurant like ours.''
Mohit sampled a forkful of tabouli with approval.
``I eat this all day long,'' he said. ``I like to think that my diet may be the reason that, at my age, I am still able to work 16 hours a day. And go through the winter without a cold!''
The owner has the raffishly weathered good looks of a mustached Jean Paul Belmondo, with a full measure of the mischief in that actor's eyes. One of six children, Mohit was born in Khouzestown, Iran, an oasis first known for producing dates, then oil. His father sold real estate.
``Your home and land is good,'' Mohit says of Middle Eastern politics. ``You don't hate the streets and buildings. But you can come to hate the regime.''
America beckoned early. Movies displayed a vast landscape of melodrama and prosperity. The conventional wisdom was: Go to America, get a good education; come back, get a good job; and so you're fixed for life.
Then came Khomeini.
But Mohit was enrolled as a theater major at City College of New York. America turned out not to be Eden or even Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma. It was instead an urban context for competition and violence in which his apartment, in an East Sixties brownstone, was repeatedly burglarized.
Mohit was working a fancy restaurant at Central Park South called Orson's where some people from Norfolk's Omni International Hotel came to dine one night. His tableside magic with Caesar salad and steak tartare led to an offer to work the new Esplanade. Thus it was in 1976, tooling to his new job in a battered Rambler, that Mohit stopped at the diner on Granby Street.
``It lacked charm,'' he recalled.
Charm and culinary pizazz were elements Mohit was equipped to supply. He enrolled at Old Dominion University to complete his education and worked over the mounting months for the Omni's downtown Esplanade, the Mariner's Wharf, Le Charlieu, the Oasis and the Harbor Club.
Mohit taught mime under the Rainbow Program at ODU and at the Academy of the Norfolk Ballet. He assistant-directed and stage-managed many Riverview Playhouse productions with ODU theater professor Paul Dicklin, from ``Oedipus Rex'' to ``Cabaret.'' The crucial connection to the restaurant business - showmanship.
``Presentation,'' Mohit noted, ``is the first 50 percent.''
He received his bachelor of arts degree in speech and theater from ODU in 1978. In 1979, he revisited his old Iranian neighborhood and encountered a childhood friend named Simin. Then Mohit flew back to the U.S.
Thought about it.
Flew again to Iran.
``She was surprised to see me,'' Mohit remembered. ``I said, `I'm back. I really love you, I want to marry you, and all that stuff.' ''
Simin said yes.
But the hostage crisis kept her overseas for eight months while Iranian authorities, unappreciative of American emigres, ``reviewed her papers.'' It was a tense time. When she at last arrived in Norfolk, it was with a sense of deliverance.
``Simin is,'' says Fouad, ``a very, very fine woman in the true sense.''
``Fouad is,'' says Simin, 45, ``a wonderful husband, a wonderful father, and a great human being.''
They have one son, Pooyah, 12, an ebullient seventh-grader at Blair Middle School.
The family has worked together on a number of enterprises leading to the restaurant: a general store on Colley Avenue that was purchased by an expanding Eastern Virginia Medical School; his labors to become an award-winning real-estate salesman; hers to become a critical-care registered nurse at DePaul Hospital.
When an automotive repair shop closed on Granby Street, salesman Mohit went to the diner next door to inquire if the owners were interested in purchasing the property for possible expansion.
They said no - but would he be interested in purchasing the diner?
Kismet: Guess which diner it was. MAKING IT MEATLESS
Laura Johnson, 24, the other waitress at Tabouli, reports Mohit is a nice man to work for.
``He's very loving with his wife and child,'' she said. ``He's their whole life. It's pleasant to work for that.''
Mohit feels the only drawback to his business is the time it takes him away from his son.
But it supplies him with a sizable extended family. When dear friends were killed at Christmas last year by a drunken driver, customers closed ranks to console the grieving Mohits. They were giving back some of what they got besides food at Tabouli.
``Difficulties in life are innumerable,'' Mohit said. ``It's how you deal with them that matters. I prefer to go through with a smile.''
``Fouad'' means ``heart'' in Arabic; he serves it up freely with the Middle Eastern ``hamburger'' - felafel.
``All beans,'' explained Mohit. ``Chopped chickpeas and fava beans mixed with herbs, shaped into patties and fried. Much healthier than meat; you still get protein, but it is easy on the digestive system.''
Nor is it bland; cumin, red pepper, thyme and basil provide felafel with an attractive edge.
Other items among the many at Tabouli:
Must Ba Dem June. Eggplant, tomatoes and onions sauteed with garlic and served with yogurt and rice ($6.90).
Vegetarian Lasagna. Layers of noodles stuffed with spinach, carrots and broccoli, plus Parmesan, mozzarella and cottage cheese ($7.90).
Arabian Pizza. Olive oil, herbs, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and mozzarella cheese ($4.90).
And don't forget the fresh-squeezed carrot juice, orange as a comic-strip pumpkin and surprisingly sweet, $1.80 the 10-ounce glass.
(The pulp goes into homemade carrot cake with whipped-cream icing, $2.25.)
As the sunrays slanted toward dusk on Granby Street, Mohit rolled up his sleeves.
``I do everything here,'' he said. ``I do the pots and pans. Small store, small operation.''
Only one other individual does it all better, according to him - Simin.
``It's what you put into it,'' Mohit confided. ``We put a lot of our family in, and love. We receive it back.''
Because Tabouli, after all, has a lot less to do with kismet than with plain hard work. Consult the Mohits. They will tell you that is the real stuff American dreams are made on. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Tabouli serves Mediterranean and vegetarian cuisine, including the
Mazeh platter - a sampler of feta cheese, hummus and baba ganoosh.
Chef Fouad Mohit and his wife, Simin, have worked together on a
number of enterprises leading to Tabouli in Norfolk.
Carrot juice is one of several fresh-squeezed juices found on the
menu at Tabouli.
by CNB