New Saint John Takeout Restaurant Will Share ‘Secret’ Lebanese Family Recipes
SAINT JOHN — One of Deanna Dempsey’s most prominent memories growing up was of her grandmother Penny’s traditional Lebanese cooking.
“My grandmother is the third-generation Lebanese, she was always in the kitchen cooking for others and cooking for us and it was always delicious one-of-a-kind Lebanese dishes,” says Dempsey.
“For me, it was normal to get it once a week, but for other people, they made such a big deal about getting it. I would hear people tell her all the time ‘You should sell this food, do whatever you can with it.'”
Now, many years later, Dempsey, along with her grandmother Penny Christie, will actually be selling that food with their new business opening next month, LebanOn the Go.
LebanON the Go will be a takeout restaurant that will operate out of The Cornerstone in uptown Saint John, a venue for weddings and events that’s actually owned by Dempsey’s cousin, Natasha Tobias.
Dempsey will run the business with Christie, who will serve as head chef. All the recipes are passed down in the family through generations. Items on the menu will include cooked Kibbeh, Warak Enab, Yakhni and Mujadara, just to name a few.
“There’s something just a little bit different about our [food], which she called her ‘secret recipe’ and now I know what that secret is,” says Dempsey.
“People would ask, ‘I made this dish and it just didn’t taste like yours, what do you put in it?’ And she says, ‘Like Coronel Sanders, I don’t give away my recipe.’ Now I’ve been passed the secret and I want to share it with our city.”
When LebanOn the Go opens, customers will be asked to place their orders a day in advance. Customers can then pick them up for either lunch or dinner the following day. Though they will have some extra meals made each day, they will encourage customers to place their order in advance to ensure they’re able to get the dishes they want.
“I’m encouraging preorders because these dishes take so much work. It’s not just getting lucky and being able to peel some vegetables and throw things together. It’s rolling, and other techniques to do things and a lot of steps to do it,” says Dempsey. “I felt it was best to do the preorders because if we were doing it day-by-day, and if we did have a steady clientele coming in and ordering, we might not be able to meet that.”
The goal is to open the week after Thanksgiving, but they will be announcing the exact opening date on the business’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
The business will start out as a takeout model at The Cornerstone, but the goal is to move to a bigger space where people can sit down to eat. But until then. Dempsey hopes LebanOn the Go gives people another great place to grab a bite.
“We have so many people with so many different likes and dislikes. We want Saint John to grow and we want more options,” she says. “I’m hoping this traditional food will be something people will go to as well that they enjoy.”