A Short History of Sahadi’s

The story of Sahadi’s begins as so many American food stories do: with the dream of a better life and the remembered flavors of a homeland far away.

In the late nineteenth century, Arab Christians left the Middle East by the thousands, fleeing wars and economic insecurity. Between 1880 and 1920, about fifty thousand immigrants from areas now known as Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine arrived in New York City, settling in a neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower West Side that would come to be called Little Syria. The first Sahadi’s store, located just a block off the Hudson River, was opened by my great-great uncle Abrahim Sahadi, one of five siblings from Zahlé, Lebanon, a river town and historically a center of Lebanese trade and agriculture. Abrahim immigrated to America in the late 1800s, leaving behind his three brothers and a sister in hopes of finding work to help support them and his parents. In 1895 he decided to open a store where fellow Arabs could buy the dry goods, olive oil, and Turkish pistachios they were accustomed to enjoying back home. With the assistance of Khalil, a brother back home, Abrahim began importing bulk goods and selling them primarily to fellow Middle Eastern immigrants.