Nabila’s is a Lebanese restaurant in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood.
It’s the culmination of a years-long dream to bring the home cooking of my mother, Nabila, to the neighborhood I call home today.
Born in Beirut, Nabila learned to cook from her own mother and grandmother.
She held those recipes close as she fled her country during the Lebanese Civil War, moving to Egypt, California and Saudi Arabia before settling in Washington DC.
In her late 40s, armed with no experience cooking professionally, she took over a small storefront and turned it into a wonderfully successful Lebanese catering business.
My brothers and I were lucky to eat our mother’s cooking nightly, but the full show was reserved for her much-loved dinner parties.
They were marvelous events that brought people together and celebrated the cultural strength & generosity of Nabila’s cherished country.
My hope is to recreate the spirit of Nabila’s dinner parties and share her beautiful cooking - the kind of food rarely found outside of Lebanese homes - with my Brooklyn community today.
