'Stay Generous'

“We spend more time here than we do in our own homes. This is our home pretty much, so when people come in here, they’re not customers, they’re guests,” says Yosef Abu-Gdairi. “They’re coming into our home, so we want to feed them like we just invited them.”

He opened Petra Middle Eastern Cuisine in Mishawaka, Indiana, in May 2023 with chef Safaa Rizk and Dawoud Abu-Gdairi (Yosef’s father and Rizk’s husband).

All the dishes at Petra are halal. Dawoud orders and picks up halal food from Chicago for the restaurant. And everything is made with Jordanian flair—generous portions packed with aromatic spices like cinnamon, ginger, cumin, sumac, paprika, saffron and cardamom. Rizk is known for her falafel, shawarma, kefta, grape leaves, oozi and mansaf—tender chicken or lamb served with a savory yogurt sauce over spiced rice—the national dish of Jordan.

“It’s all ‘homemade,’” says Yosef, translating from Arabic for Rizk. “She’s saying, it’s as if she’s at her house and she’s cooking—that’s the food. She doesn’t treat it like a restaurant per se, she treats it as if she’s giving food to her kids. She likes everything to look nice, look neat, presentable as if she would eat it.”

Rizk had a successful restaurant in Amman, Jordan, for three years before the pandemic shut everything down. About a year and a half ago, she came to Mishawaka after she and Dawoud connected on Facebook and started talking about starting a restaurant here. As their business idea started to blossom, so too did a romance. They named the restaurant Petra after the famous ancient city in Jordan carved in red sandstone. Petra is a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

“Without her, there’s no restaurant,” says Yosef, who greets and serves customers and manages calls and to-go orders. “Her passion is cooking. She loves feeding people. She wouldn’t be able to do this if she didn’t love it, because it’s like full time — it’s like double full time. I’ve never seen anybody work as hard as her. I can’t even keep up.”

In addition to their regular menu, Rizk sometimes makes special dishes, like whole fish, and a whole chicken stuffed with rice, veggies and ground beef. If she’s just made spinach pies or dessert, she’ll often send Yosef out to offer some to waiting guests as a complimentary treat.

“She always tells me, ‘Dallak kareem,’ which means, ‘stay generous,’” says Yosef. “When you’re putting food on a plate, always make sure the plate is full. If somebody is hungry, you want them to be able to come in and eat until they’re full.”

Amir F. travels to the region for work and always makes sure to stop in at Petra and have the lamb oozi, which is boiled until tender and then spiced with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, cumin and more and seared in a skillet, then served over fragrant seasoned rice with peas and carrots.

“The dishes here are very generous,” he says. “They have a lot of options for lamb. I like that it’s not just plain rice. These guys do not use food coloring. The color here is from spices, like cinnamon and turmeric, and they have a lot of little things like almond chips and fried onion that really makes it.”

Amir isn’t the only repeat customer. The delicious food and the spirit of generous hospitality bring people back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever just seen someone once. I’m here all the time,” says Yosef. “When somebody comes, and they sit down, and they eat, they definitely come back.”

Petra Middle Eastern Cuisine

1551 E McKinley Ave.

Mishawaka, IN 

574.383.5713

Katie Jamieson is a poet, massage therapist, former publisher of Edible Michiana and associate editor of Curl magazine. Find Katie @breath.of.freedom.poetry on Instagram, breathoffreedompoetry.substack.com and breathoffreedommassage.com.