About
Lebanese, American, and hungry the entire time.
I grew up in Dearborn, where the best meal of your life is usually in a strip mall next to a phone repair shop. My family is Lebanese, so food was never just food. It was how we showed up for each other.
- on Instagram
- 125K
- impressions a month
- 5M
- eating on camera since
- 2017
Halal Food Junkie started as a way to get out of the house during a rough stretch for my family. It turned into a guide people actually plan trips around, and a way to send real customers to Arab and Muslim owned businesses that deserve them.
I'm not a critic. I'm the friend who grabs your arm and says you have to try this. I travel for food, I laugh at myself, and the funniest person on my page is still my mom.
This website is the searchable half of the page. Instagram is where the first bite happens. Here is where you find the address at 11pm, check whether a chain is actually halal, and read the full list instead of screenshotting a story. How places get picked.
- 2017
First post: the western BBQ burger at Burger Shack in Dearborn. The page was called Dearborn Food Junkie and I had no idea what I was starting.
- Then
Nobody was putting halal food on social media, so the name changed and the map got bigger. One Ramadan food festival brought 2,000 new followers in a single day.
- Also
I was substitute teaching. The students found the page, told the whole school, and did more for my marketing than I ever did.
- 2019
I pointed the camera at my mom cooking for Ramadan. She became the star. I became the guy who gets yelled at for eating before it's plated.
- Now
125K of you, food tours from LA to Toronto to Lebanon, and the same rule as day one: if I post it, I ate it and I meant it.
People who have handed me the mic.
- Local 4 (WDIV)Raised $15,000 for Lebanon relief
- University of MichiganDearborn community food tours
- Rep. Rashida TlaibDearborn community food tours
- Zaman InternationalCharity work with NFL lineman Oday Aboushi
- 30 local restaurantsPandemic relief meals, coordinated by HFJ