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Mona was a runner up on Gordon Ramsay's cooking show, The fWORD, "Find Me A Fanny". Read more
Watch the audition tape, "How To Make Humous In 3 Minutes"
Samara Cuisine offers value for money cooking classes, we were featured in Director magazine. Read more
Samara Cuisine is a small registered limited company based in Richmond,
South-West London
We have a certificate in food hygiene from the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health
Tel: 07740 869 849
Email:email us
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I come from Beirut -- from the centre of town overlooking the sea squeezed between the burnt-out husk of the Holiday Inn on one side and the mini paradise of the American University of Beirut on the other.
 
The war started when I was still a small child and followed me up to the day I left in my twenties. So, I can’t really think about my childhood or adolescence without thinking of the war and all its fears and anxieties.
My father is a printer and his works are in the basement of our apartment building so when the bombs started falling around us and the lights went out, that’s where we and all our neighbours in the 6-floor block would gather until the danger was past. I can remember night after night that went by like that, with the radio telling us what was happening above our heads.
When I was old enough, I wanted to go to university to study art and design but the war made this difficult. Fortunately, Rafiq Hariri had set up a foundation to help young Lebanese like me and I was able to go the American University and then Beirut University College. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was to have the most dramatic effect on my life.
Among the lecturers at AUB was a young Londoner, who had just left Oxford University, looking for adventure and thought Beirut would be a good place to find it.
Four years later, I left Beirut without telling my father and met him in Cyprus where we were married. We had to borrow my airfare to London from an old friend of his grandparents in Nicosia.
I have lived in London ever since. We now have two funny and lively girls, Isabel and Samara, who have -- as people always tell you -- turned my life upside down, but in the most delightful way.
My first job was in a fish and chip shop in Queen’s Park. Then I worked at the Lebanese embassy in Kensington. And after that, I worked for a while for the Arabic newspaper, Al Hayat, in its offices next to Olympia. I worked at the BBC for the following eleven years and then in 2007 I dedicated myself to Samara Cuisine.
When I first came to London, my English wasn’t good. I found that one of the most immediate ways I could communicate with the new people I met and leave a good impression was through the Lebanese food I cooked. This had always been a passion with me. As time went by, I became known for my cooking. People started to ask me to cook for them. Slowly, this has built into a real business -- Samara Cuisine.
Food is still a passion for me first and foremost -- the love of art and design that I once studied in Lebanon now finds its expression in cooking. To me, Samara Cuisine -- named after my younger daughter -- is the distillation and culmination of all I have experienced in my life between London and Beirut.
Why 'Samara Cuisine'?
Samara Cuisine was inspired by my new baby girl, Samara. Samara's favourite
Lebanese food is hommous and black olives. The name Samara has many
meanings; In Arabic, the origin of the word is Samar, which means
entertainment, particularly at night. It conjures images of sitting in the
Sahara with friends and family beneath the stars enjoying a great feast,
smoking fruit-infused hubbly bubbly and drinking aromatic coffee. In latin,
Samara means an Elm Tree, while in Hebrew it has several meanings all to do
with being in a high place like a mountain-top or somewhere with a
panoramic view. If you look on the internet, you will see that there are two
big cities called Samara - one in Iraq and one in Russia.
There's also a famous story about Samara - which gave the title to the book
by the American author, John O'Hara, Appointment in Samara. The story tells
of a man meeting a woman in black in a market in Baghdad and realising that
the woman is Death. The woman looks at him with surprise and lets him go.
Scared that she's come to take him away, he finds the fastest horse he can
and rides all night to the city of Samara. The next day, he is walking
through the streets when he sees the same woman dressed in black. This time,
she approaches him. He asks her how she can be here when only yesterday he
saw her in Baghdad. She replies that she was equally surprised to see him in
Baghdad the day before - as she had an appointment with him today in Samara.
Please call us on 07740 869 849 or email us for further details.
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