The Kharisma Magazine The Kharisma Magazine (Full) Premiere Issue | Page 94

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K H A R I S M A
Inter view with Maha,
Mark and Monica Barsoom
Realising her
F
P R E M I E R
dream
ood
Kharisma: It’s so great to have you all here today! I would
love each of you to share the journey that led you here to
give birth to the Maha’s Restaurant.
through
After years of dreaming of
opening her own little
Egyptian restaurant,
Head Chef Maha Barsoom
opened Maha’s on
September 28th, 2014
alongside her two children,
Monika and Mark.
They conver ted their space from
what was once a kitchen and
bath cabinet store into a cozy
restaurant of t ​ heir​ own.
It has been named by
Toronto Life as “...a contender
for the city’s best.”
D A R E
T O
B E
I C O N I C
Mark: I used to be a barista at a coffee shop called Grinder.
Monica and I used to both work there. We pretty much
ran the place ourselves. I did the afternoons, she did
the mornings. It just really helped us develop the tools
to understand how to run a business and run a shop. A
couple of months after our dad was laid off, my parents
decided to take a little vacation in Cairo. To blow off some
steam and have some fun. When they were gone, Monica
and I were really looking at what we wanted to do with
our lives and what we wanted to do in the future.
Monica: I had just finished my undergrad at York, and
Mark finished two years of Centennial College. At Grinder,
we worked very closely with our boss, James, who was
an amazing inspiration. He started like us. He took the
initiative and started a restaurant called Morning Glory.
It’s a brunch place that now his sister runs. I know his
story. He knew that our mom was an amazing cook and
she’s very passionate.
We’re all very passionate individuals, so he was very
supportive. We’d talk about opening a restaurant, but
opening a restaurant was very high-risk and we were
always kind of against it, but it was always our mother’s
dream to open a restaurant. I think it took our parents
leaving and having that bit of separation to really begin to
step back and assess what we were doing with our lives,
and how we can actually achieve success in opening a
restaurant.
Kharisma: What about you, Maha?
Maha: I had been thinking of opening a restaurant for
quite some time. I love to cook, and I’ve been cooking
since I was 15 years old. I just enjoy it. I started my kitchen
business. I have a degree in English literature, and my
background is in translation. I worked as a translator in
Egypt and here in Canada, as an interpreter. I was just
a little bit hesitant about opening a restaurant. Then a
friend, encouraged me to do some catering because we
had a get-together at one of the facilities that I interpret
at and everybody was bringing something, so I brought
M A G A Z I N E
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