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If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: if you want to be a world-class canoeist, you’ll need to eat like a world-class canoeist.

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Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2021 (286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: if you want to be a world-class canoeist, you’ll need to eat like a world-class canoeist.

East Selkirk resident Chris Gerwing is a decorated paddler who has competed across North America, in marathon races as long and arduous as the 715-km Yukon River Quest. When he is not row, row, rowing his boat, Gerwing can often be found standing in line at Winnipeg’s Baraka Pita Bakery & Restaurant, 1783 Main St., where, in addition to such Middle Eastern delights as donairs, spinach pies and maamoul, the latter a shortbread biscuit filled with dates or nuts, one can also chow down on a Chris Special.

“When I started going there I usually got falafel wrapped in a pita, along with chicken, garlic sauce and hot sauce, no tahini, the idea being to keep the calories down, but the protein up,” he says, noting he used to live a few blocks away from the family-run establishment, and biked past it five days a week on his way to work, drooling all the way. “They always had to explain my order to new staff who usually poured on too much sauce, so eventually they just trained everyone how to make what they called a Chris Special, which other folks started ordering when they saw it being made for me.” A variety of baklava (left) and MaaMoul (shortbread cookie) looks mouthwatering. Regular customers say it truly is. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

Gerwing, whose 18-foot racing canoe is now partly sponsored by the eatery, says he’s felt at home at Baraka, Arabic for blessing, from the moment he first set foot inside the door of the down-to-earth locale, however many years ago.

“Earlier in life I spent a week in Lebanon, where the owners are from, and also spoke some tourist Arabic from being in Egypt for a month,” he notes. “It was finding that place that really made me feel a part of the neighbourhood.”

• • •Saeed Aboumrad (left) and Alaa Trabolsi display the fatire at Baraka Bakery. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

As Gerwing mentioned, Madi Aboumrad, who co-founded the bakery/restaurant in 2004 with his brother Sami (no longer involved), was born and raised in Lebanon. He was only 17 years old in 1976 when he traveled solo from his homeland to join another brother who had settled in London, Ont. a few years earlier.

“Lebanon was a bit of a mess at the time and it was all about making a better life for himself,” says Aboumrad’s son Rami, one of five family members currently working at Baraka, where the first thing one notices is an imposing-looking, copper oven reserved for baking pita bread; that is, if your attention — and nasal cavities — aren’t drawn to one of five spits roasting beef or chicken, morning, noon and night. “The way I understand it, my dad moved from London to Calgary in 1979 or ’80, where he managed to get the required paperwork done to bring his mom — my grandma — and the rest of his siblings over to Canada.”

Rami, 36, the eldest of five siblings, says his dad toiled in the construction field until getting married in the early 1980s, after which he and wife Zakia opened a bakery in a Calgary neighbourhood teeming with Lebanese immigrants. Calling his mother a “whiz” when it comes to desserts such as baklava and baked goods known as ka’ak, Rami says his parents jointly ran that operation for over a decade, up until they moved the entire clan back to Lebanon in 1999.Baraka Bakery doesn’t waste window space on views, instead using it to promote their food and services. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

“My brother and sisters and I were all born in Canada, so our mom and dad thought it was important to go home, to give us a taste of the culture, the language, all that stuff,” Rami says, stopping to remark, “There’s my dad now,” as the elder Aboumrad walks past sporting a bright, orange T-shirt, the official, restaurant uniform, in search of keys to a backroom pantry. “The thing was, we’d already been going to an Islamic school in Calgary, and had been living in a part of town where all our neighbours, practically, were Lebanese. So aside from the climate and terrain, living there wasn’t too much different than what we were used to, though it was still pretty cool to see it for ourselves.”

The Aboumrads returned to Alberta in 2001. Madi helped his brothers open another eatery, the Village Pita Bakery, that, in addition to baked goods, also offered shawarma and falafel. One problem: shawarma shops in Calgary were quickly becoming a dime a dozen, so Madi did his homework, and learned that wasn’t quite the case 1,300 kilometres to the east.

“Simply put, he felt the market in Calgary was saturated and viewed Winnipeg as a good place to start fresh,” Rami says, noting his dad bought their building — once home to a Polish catering company — before purchasing a house, which turned out to be the same West Kildonan abode his parents live in to this day.Badis Maymoni carves chicken slices from the spinning spit. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

Rami, who tried his hand at a few jobs outside the family biz before officially joining his father at Baraka full time at age 25, folds his hands behind his head and laughs heartily when asked whether the 27-seat restaurant was a hit right out of the gate, upon opening in the spring of 2004.

“Ha, not even close,” he replies. “An hour or two used to pass between customers, and even when somebody came in, they didn’t always know what shawarma was. There was only one other place in the city serving this type of food back then, so there was a lot of educating going on, explaining what falafel was — that it’s vegetarian, that it’s not a meatball — those sorts of things.

“One time a person came in and asked for a ‘debonair’ instead of a donair and I thought, ‘Hmm, that’s not bad. Maybe we should call it that, too, to make it sound more appealing.’”Chicken shawarma is artfully prepared, only to be devoured. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

Sales eventually picked up, aided, Rami feels, by similar tasting eateries popping up here and there. In the same manner one doesn’t always frequent the same pizza or burger joint, people who sampled shawarma or fatayer, a type of meat pie, elsewhere began dropping by Baraka to see how their fare measured up. Things really took a turn for the good, mind you, when former Free Press restaurant critic Marion Warhaft awarded the locale a glowing review in 2010, citing its “succulent slices of marinated chicken,” “fabulously rich tzatziki” and “billowy pitas… so good you’ll probably want to take a package home.”

Sure, Warhaft went on and on about the shop’s “delicious Lebanese specialties” in her write-up, except Rami stops short of describing their menu as “Lebanese-authentic.” Rather, it’s a mix of family recipes combined with their tailoring it to a North American audience, he says. (Yes, they have regulars who either hail from or have ties to the Middle East, people who compare their food favourably to what they enjoyed “back home,” but that makes up a small percentage of their clientele, he allows.)

“Even the garlic sauce we use is not something you’d find in Lebanon. But that’s the beauty of being in Winnipeg, where there was no expectation of what falafel or even pickled turnips should taste like,” he continues. “We went with what we know, but that never stopped us from learning along the way, by determining what worked best for Winnipeggers and Manitobans. I’m guessing we got things right — or at least close to — because here we are, still going strong, almost 18 years later.”Saeed takes phone orders. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

Out of precaution, Baraka closed twice, for a week at a time, during the height of the pandemic. The restaurant, which includes a grocery section well-stocked with imported foodstuffs such as chickpeas and falafel mixes, continues to be pickup only. And although chairs and tables remain stacked against a wall dotted with poster-size, colour photographs of Lebanon, sales actually went up, not down, during the last 20 months, Rami is pleased to report.

“We’re very thankful and humbled people chose to come here when there was so much else going on in their lives. The whole, support-local movement was really something to behold,” he says, noting while take-out already accounted for a big chunk of their business prior to COVID-19, staff definitely miss the interplay with dine-in customers, many of whom they continue to recognize the second they park their vehicle out front. (“Here comes lamb platter,” or, “Beef ka-bob!” they’ll shout to a cook in the back, whenever they spot a certain van or car pulling up.)

Rami, who credits his father for going out of his way through the years to hire refugees from other countries to work at Baraka — “He was technically a refugee himself back in the day, and fully understands the struggle.” — says rarely a day goes by when somebody doesn’t ask when the family is going to open a second outlet, a bit closer to their neck of the woods.Badis employs a master touch while creating a pita pie. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

It’s not like they haven’t entertained the idea, he tells them; it’s more a question of why mess with a good thing?

“There was a period, not that long ago, when I was pulling 90-hour work weeks, which have since dropped to about 60,” he says, running his left hand over his closely-shaven pate. (“Oops, sorry,” we mutter, upon learning the Thursday morning he agreed to chat with the Free Press is technically his day off.)

“My siblings and I who work here are all either starting families or thinking about starting a family — there isn’t one of us who knows what a one-week vacation feels like — so gradually we’re trying our best to get away from that go-go-go mentality,” he goes on, knowingly nodding at a customer who’s just requested “the usual.”Pita pies go into the oven on a regular basis. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)

“But hey, most of the world’s best restaurants — and I’m not saying that’s us, far from it — only have one location, right? So I guess what we’re trying to do is stay true to what we’ve done along, while keeping the family together, which is very important in our culture. After all, I’ve never heard of anybody who, on their deathbed said, ‘Boy, if only I’d worked more, or, ‘If only I’d had more stores.’ That won’t be us, I promise.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric restaurants and businesses.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca Baraka Bakery’s beef donair is second to none. (Jessica Lee / Winnipeg Free Press)