FOOD & DRINK
South Asian NWA
EXCERPTS FROM ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS.
BYANNEMARIE ANDERSON, SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
NEWCOMERS, NEW CUISINE: Ali Momani, from Jordan, opened Community Butcher in 2018; Lisa Purakayastha of Texas and her husband, India native Abhijeet Purakayastha, opened Khana Indian Grill in 2015.
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he mission of the Southern Foodways Alliance, part of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, is to document, study and explore the “diverse food cultures of the changing American South.” Earlier this year, SFA oral historian Annemarie Anderson interviewed members of the growing South Asian food community in Northwest Arkansas, many of whom moved to the region because they or a family member got a job at Walmart. In 2008, one Indo-Pakistani restaurant and one gas station sold Indian staples in Northwest Arkansas. Newcomers often had to travel hours to get South Asian goods. Now there’s a robust network of restaurants, grocery stores and butcher shops. To see video and read the full transcripts of the interviews below as well as additional interviews, visit southernfoodways.org/oral-history/south-asian-arkansas/. Ali Momani Community Butcher, Lowell Ali Momani, born in 1971, is originally from Jordan. He provides a local source of goat and lamb for Muslim consumers in Northwest Arkansas. In 2018, he opened up Community Butcher in Lowell. Momani relies upon farmers and meat processors in Northwest Arkansas to provide locally grown halal meat. He works with a farmer in Centerton to supply lamb, goat and chickens,
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ARKANSAS TIMES
and he uses a meat processing plant in Winslow, Arkansas. Many Indian restaurants buy halal goat and lamb from Momani. He also butchers meat to order for individual customers. Momani attended culinary school in the capital city of Amman where he learned to cook dishes like maqluba, kabs and mansaf. In 1995, he came to Dallas just to visit, but decided to stay. While living in Dallas, he managed several restaurants. When his wife got a job with Walmart in 2004, they moved to Northwest Arkansas. After a brief move to Miami, they returned to Northwest Arkansas in 2010: Oh, we move here to Arkansas because my wife, she get a job at Walmart and we have to move here. So we move here 2004, we stay for like three years, four years, and we move to Miami for five years, and we come back here. So I became a butcher because every time we need to go buy meat, we had to go to Dallas to get like halal meat, you know. We are Muslim, we have to have halal meat, cannot get any kind of meat. And we had to drive all the way to Dallas or Tulsa or Kansas City to pick up fresh meat, so that’s why we came up with the idea to just open my own shop and serve the community here and make sure it’s halal 100 percent and is fresh meat, not frozen or not — you know, just give it fresh the whole time. ... We had to go get the animals from the auction, have to find the goat and lamb from auction, and I keep it on the farm. We have farm
in Centerton. And every time what I need, I see what I need for the week, I take it to the meat processing in Winslow, in Arkansas, so that’s what they process the meat there, and I tell like what I need every week, see how much I need, or a month, and I’ll take it there. We take to them live, and they will slice it there and I bring it back to my store. So the meat processing, they have to go by the Islamic way, so they have to see all the rules, and there’s a guy from the USDA. They cannot do anything without him, and he has to be in the top. Anytime they want to kill, he has to be there. Even if they kill one chicken, he has to be there. They cannot do anything without him. So the guy, he really knows about Islam and he knows, you know, what need to be done before you kill it, and he will go the Islamic way. He’s allowed to be saying the prayer on the animal before they kill it. ... I have a lot of customer, a lot of people from — even non-Muslim, I have like probably 90 percent of my customer they’re non-Muslim, they’re from India, and I have some Americans, some other cultures, people from Iran, from Arab. So everybody who come here, I have made a lot of friends, and even I have some people from Joplin, Fort Smith, they will come to buy halal meat from here, yeah. So we have a lot of — and this one year, my business has grown up probably like double times when I was open. It’s getting bigger and bigger. And everybody like the meat.