www.modernluxuria.com
Love at First Bite Delicious and meaningful food by Chappelle Kitchen Catering WORDS BY TWYLA CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHY ERIN WALKER
Stewed meats and colourful vegetables are heaped
In the spring of 2022, Ibrahim received a request
high in clay pots and platters. Fistfuls of mint stand
to cook 130 meals for the Mosquers Film Festival.
at the ready, waiting to infuse water kept hot in
The lengthy list of 5-star Google reviews that
shiny silver teapots; lemon wedges perch on piles of
accumulated thereafter caught the eye of a pilot
roasted chicken thighs, and baskets of bread take
ferrying VIP passengers through Alberta in the fall.
their place next to trays of flaky baklava.
The passengers tasked the pilot with sourcing fresh, made-from-scratch food that was interesting and different from what one usually eats in the air.
Digging into the foods that Aya Ibrahim of Chappelle Kitchen Catering prepares is a satisfying experience. Even the air is perfumed with lemon, garlic, mint,
The VIP passengers were The Eagles, and they
cinnamon, and other heady aromas indicative of
enjoyed Ibrahim’s food so much that first night,
Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine.
they requested her food again when they were passing through the airspace a few days later as they continued on with their Canadian concert tour.
As beautifully prepared as these dishes are, it may come as a surprise to learn that before Ibrahim and her family moved to Canada from Egypt in
“When I first got the phone call, I thought it was a
2013, this diminutive dynamo tutored people in
joke,” Ibrahim says of the day the pilot phoned. “I
medical terminology. After settling in Edmonton,
thought she meant to call someone else.”
and on days when she wasn’t working in medical administration, Ibrahim filled her spare time
Ibrahim cooked up a buffet of barbecued chicken
helping other new immigrants source clothing and
thighs,
household items. She fed them, too, along with
hummus, fresh pita, her made-from-scratch hot
many hungry and unhoused people in the inner
sauce, and baklava.
salads,
vegetables,
fish
and
shrimp,
city. The decision to establish a catering business came the day Ibrahim was denied the opportunity
What sets this food apart from many other catering
to present food in a shelter because she didn’t have
companies, is that everything is homemade—from
a food handling permit. That problem didn’t stop
the kebabs to the silky smooth hummus and all
her; she built a commercial kitchen, got the permit,
items in between.
and started to feed the masses.
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