7 Peppers Returns To Quinpool After ‘Renoviction’ Forces Shutdown
HALIFAX — A popular Mediterranean restaurant is returning to Quinpool Road after more than a year’s absence.
7 Peppers Grill is scheduled to open soon in a new location, on the same block as the Atlantic Superstore, just down the street from its former home.
Hekmat Ani owns and operates 7 Peppers along with her husband, Abdul Jabi. She says they’re thrilled to “finally” be opening once again.
The pair were forced to shut down 7 Peppers last year. They, along with a few other businesses at 6290 Quinpool, were forced to leave so the property owners can build the commercial and residential “Ted” tower on the site.
Ani says she and Jabi began looking for a new space as soon as they were given notice but came up empty-handed after months of searching.
Eventually, with their lease expiring and no place to move, on September 1, 2019, they were forced to close.
“It was very sad, but what could we do?” she says.
Although they had to shut their doors, Ani says their goal was always to reopen 7 Peppers as soon as possible.
Ani and Jabi are originally from Syria and have been in the restaurant industry in Halifax for close to 15 years. Before 7 Peppers, they ran both the Aleppo Restaurant and Aleppo Café. Restaurants are what they know, Ani says, and they never planned to do anything else.
“Because my husband’s a chef. There’s nothing we can do for income, only just a restaurant,” she says with a good-natured laugh.
“We didn’t close the company, we didn’t do anything like that,” she says. “We still have the same phone number… the website is the same.”
After being forced to close, Ani says they never stopped looking for a new location.
Eventually, she says they found their soon-to-be home with the help of a broker. They managed to view the space before it even went to market and had to convince the landlord to let them lease it before he accepted their offer.
“He asked me, ‘do you think your customers will come back?’ And I said, are you kidding, they will be running through the doors to see us,” Ani recalls with a chuckle.
With a lease signed and renovations of their new space underway, Ani and Jabi had hoped to open 7 Peppers at the beginning of December.
But construction hiccups — and now Covid-19 — have delayed them, and she can’t say for sure when they will officially open.
When they do, however, she says it will be almost the same as customers remember, with a few small changes, including an “exciting” upgrade to their shawarma.
7 Peppers will be open for takeout and delivery if Covid forces them to remain closed to dine-in customers, and Ani says she hopes people will still support them with those options.
“We miss our customers a lot. We’re so excited to open again,” Ani says.
Trevor Nichols is a reporter for Huddle in Halifax. Send him an e-mail with your story suggestions: [email protected].