Getting to Know: Hen House
For many people, the first time they might have heard the word “shawarma” was in 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers right after our titular heroes have saved the day and Tony Stark suggests they grab a bite to eat. But for Antony Nassif, shawarma is more than just a food that some superhero has never tasted - it’s a way of life.
Antony is from Lebanon and his family eventually moved to Montreal. But after moving to New York, he needed a little taste of home and couldn’t find it.
“I lived in Lebanon, worked in Lebanon, grew up eating Lebanese food with my family, but shawarma was very, very big in Montreal. And when I moved to New York, I always wanted to open up a shawarma shop. But I realized there were no Lebanese shawarma shops in the city,” he says.
And that’s all he needed to get the seed planted.
Starting Young
Cooking has always been a big part of Antony’s life. He started at three years old, watching his mother cook him breakfast, processing what she was doing and imitating it as best he could.
“I remember my mom was making me eggs. It was one of those little coil ovens. You turn the knob to eight, the coil gets orange. Put the pan on. Put the butter in. Turn it down to five. Put the eggs in. Mix it up. Put salt and pepper in, then turn the heat off and mix it. That's kind of how it registered with me,” he says. “And then the next day, I pulled up a chair, made my mom eggs in the morning. I just started really just having the best time cooking. After that, I was just always trying to help her cook.”
At 14 years old, he got his first restaurant job at the Italian restaurant that he would frequent with his family. What started as a hobby and a way to make a few extra dollars to go to the movies grew into a passion and since then he has only ever worked in restaurants.
That passion led him to culinary school where he came in with a lot of experience that his peers didn’t have and sometimes that got him in hot water with his professors.
“One of my teachers didn't like me at all. It was easy for me at that point so I would barely go to class. I would go in for the exams and I would get a hundred percent,” says Antony. “So this one teacher wanted us to prepare a hot and cold appetizer menu. I missed all of his classes. I made a beautiful menu with all these things. He failed me.”
Shawarma’s Regional Differences
It comes as no surprise that shawarma's roots trace back to the Middle East, particularly to countries like Lebanon and Turkey. There it emerged as a street food staple for centuries. It is traditionally made with lamb, marinated in a blend of spices, and roasted on a vertical rotisserie. But what makes Lebanese shawarma different from other variations?
The first difference is the bread. Lebanese bread is thin so it’s less carb-heavy.European breads tend to be much thicker and even Israeli pita pockets have considerably more breading than their Lebanese counterparts. The next difference is the sauce. Some restaurants will use a kind of tzatziki while halal carts are known for a runnier, yogurt-based white sauce. Hen House uses a Lebanese garlic sauce called Toum. It only requires four ingredients: garlic, oil, salt and lemon. But it brings out the flavors of whatever meat it is paired with, especially chicken.
Hen House has a bit of a secret weapon, though. Pomegranate molasses.
“In our lamb shawarma, we use tahini, but we put a lot of pomegranate molasses as well. It's like a Middle Eastern umami that gives it a kind of nutty, sweet, kind of super tasty flavor that you don't get anywhere,” says Antony.
Meant to Be
Antony’s culinary journey has taken him from a young home cook to a teenaged bus boy to a knowledgeable culinary student and all the way to the level of executive chef. At first, Hen House was just a way to make a little bit of extra money.
A pop up here and there led to an opportunity at New York’s Smorgasburg, the largest weekly open air food market in America. The competition for a spot is intense. Every year 2000 new vendors vie for a place. 200 are given the chance to let judges taste their food and only 20 are selected. Antony got in his first year but towards the end of the season, he wanted his own place.
He had a lead on a location so he quit his executive chef job and bet on himself, taking out the necessary loans to get the space after potential investors backed out. “Everything just kind of happened in the right way at the right time. I got the space. I didn't have to do any work to it. It was kind of like as is,” he says. “It was turnkey. It was perfect”
In the coming weeks and months after opening, they were able to make more than enough to sustain themselves with help from a viral fried chicken sandwich offering that remains popular to this day.
Seeing the success, the investors came back around but Antony didn’t need them anymore.
Looking to the future, Antony is happy that Hen House is a sustainable success but he’s always looking to expand his menu offerings with favorite recipes from his youth.
In fact, his favorite dish is one his grandmother used to make - a green Egyptian soup called Molokhia. Cooked with chicken stock and served over rice with other vegetables, it’s that little taste of home that Antony was looking for when he moved to New York.
“A lot of Egyptians, Lebanese will be like, ‘oh my God, there's molokhia here,’” he says. “A lot of people come and if you know about it, you know.”
Hen House NYC. If you know, you know.
