Culinarian: Atef Boulaabi

GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

On Avenue B, SOS Chefs is expanding New York’s spice cabinet, one aromatic jar at a time.

by Noemi Florea photography by Cynthia K. Cortes

TUCKED AWAY ON AVENUE B, SOS CHEFS, founded by Atef Boulaabi and her husband Adam Berkowitz in 1996, is a secret garden filled with hard-to-find spices, seasonings, and pantry staples. Boulaabi first conceived of the shop as a way of uniting her experience as a specialty supplier for New York restaurants with her love of sharing food with others. “Where I come from, everything happens in the kitchen,” Boulaabi explains, describing her Tunisian heritage. “It’s something that makes everybody unite, it’s the one thing that we all have in common.” Though she originally designed the shop as a hub for restaurant supplies, today the founders are focused on “getting chef-inspired ingredients into the hands of cooks and private chefs in their homes,” explains Berkowitz.

With the 21st-century boom in home cooking shows, reality TV, and social media, specialty cooking in the home kitchen is more popular than ever. “The home cook became much more knowledgeable,” Berkowitz says, as they discovered that many of SOS’s customers were seeking specialty ingredients listed in cookbooks by famous chefs, that couldn’t be found in the local grocery store. For the customer who wants to give the gift of culinary delights, the shop also includes assortments for all types, including for artists, lovers, and new mothers, as well as holiday themed packages for New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, with palettes designed to complement the giftee’s personality. “Molecular Must-Haves,” is geared towards the food scientist, while “A Set for Artists” offers spices and powders that double as pigments, like pomegranate powder and butterfly pea flower powder.

At the same time, Boulaabi and Berkowitz consider it their mission to promote positive cultural exchange with internationally-sourced products, decor, and conversation. “We’re here all day long telling stories about farmers in Iran or other parts of the world. People enjoy the experience here because they learn a lot,” Berkowitz affirmed. SOS even offers bundles inspired by select locations around the world, including Beirut, La Goulette, and Persia, as a way of giving customers a culinary passport in the age of staying put.

Facing the challenges of running a small business in today’s world means adaptability and resilience are key. In light of new demands posed by the pandemic, “everything has to be reconfigured, reimagined. I think it’s great,” Boulaabi asserts optimistically. As she thinks about what they have been through, and where they go from here, Boulaabi believes that as a business-owner, “it’s going to be about you enjoying your time, but at the same time you’ll always be innovating and thinking.” With Lower Manhattan’s real estate market in a constant state of flux, storefront rents have dropped while social media marketing has grown business exposure and brought in new customers. At SOS, a loyal cadre of chefs regularly tags the store on Instagram (@ soschefs) as the source of their ingredients, and in the past year a new collaboration with famed chef Daniel Bowien, founder of Mission Chinese Food, has developed. As Boulaabi reflects on both the opportunities and drawbacks of 2020, she says, “There is hope. I see it from this perspective. We have the opportunity to dream again.” DT