We are a pair of engineers from the Middle East, based in America, with a keen passion for cooking. And when engineers take on cooking, every detail is meticulously questioned and analyzed. Our idea for Tarboush emerged from a dilemma that made us ask ourselves: why don’t the dishes we cook in America taste the same as those back home in the Middle East, even when we carefully followed our Mamas’ recipes to the letter? 

In every home visit to the Middle East, the taste and aroma of the food would bring us back to life–a sensation we long for all year. Why were we not able to recreate that experience in our cooking in America? What were we missing? We were too focused on diligently following the recipes that we overlooked the value of sourcing the ingredients that truly define a dish–spices.

The solution to our dilemma lay in what was in our Mamas’ hands–jars of authentic Middle Eastern-grown spices that were the essence of every dish. During our trips back home, we began bottling up spices from our Mamas’ kitchens and packing them into our luggage. At the time, we didn’t realize that we had just taken our first spice route, transporting authentic spices from the Middle East to the United States–a route that would later grow from a few ounces in our luggage to pounds shipped across seas.

We were thrilled when the dishes we later cooked in America, using these Middle Eastern spices, finally tasted like our Mamas’ creations. Excited by our success, we began sharing them with our friends, neighbors, housemates, landlords, and co-workers–each and every one of them was blown away the instant they opened one of the spice jars. It was striking that most of them had never even heard of, let alone tasted, some of these spices before–like the Kofta, Smoky Baharat, Falafel, and Shawarma seasonings. It felt like we were sharing not just spices from our homes, but an ingrained piece of Middle Eastern culture.

Our story isn’t complete without giving credit where credit is due–our hands merely transport these authentic spices, but the real credit lies in the hands of local farmers. Behind each of our spices are stories from the homeland: from the soil-stained hands of farmers, to the coarse hands of suppliers, to the saturated hands of our mothers. And now, to yours.

بالهنا والشفا