Ostrich, and Camel, and Kangaroo, Oh My!

Brent Temple takes his second big risk in NoMi's culinary scene

Brent Temple still remembers the last few nights before he opened the doors to Habibi Middle Eastern Coney last May — mostly because he was barely sleeping. As Temple tells the story, the road to Habibi’s grand opening had been dotted with good luck and generous favors from people who believed in him.

Those factors helped the chef outfit his new eatery — a small 450-square-foot space next door to the Super 7 (the former 7 Eleven) near downtown Traverse City — with enough kitchen equipment to get cooking. But Temple admits he had no savings or safety net to fall back on if the restaurant didn’t work, and no way of knowing how Traverse City would react to a menu full of ethnic flavors. 

He needn’t have worried.

On the morning Habibi opened, Temple says there was a line out the door and spread out throughout the Super 7 parking lot. By the end of the first month, the restaurant had some $64,000 worth of receipts to show for its efforts. Nearly a year later, the restaurant has sold nearly $1 million worth of butter chicken, falafel, and other authentic Middle Eastern cuisine. Not bad for a business venture that, not long ago, looked like a gamble.

A Slow Simmer
Go back a few years and ethnic food options in northern Michigan were hard to come by, at least outside of the typical staples like Chinese and Thai food. When Aerie Restaurant & Lounge at Grand Traverse Resort and Spa hosted an Indian dinner in the fall of 2018, a core marketing angle of the event was that northern Michigan didn’t have an Indian restaurant.

When Traverse City did finally get a dedicated Indian restaurant — The Taste of India, which opened inside the Grand Traverse Mall food court in early 2020 — Temple was there to help make it happen. As executive chef, Temple worked alongside the restaurant’s owner, Golam Rabbani, to develop recipes and create a reliable, crowd-pleasing menu. But eventually, Temple got the urge to cook something other than East Indian cuisine. Specifically, he wanted to try bringing a Middle Eastern eatery to a town whose foodie scene still tilts heavily toward familiar fare like American, French, or Italian.

As it turned out, northern Michigan patrons were ready for the shift. Habibi — which means “my love” in Arabic — has been so popular in its first year that Temple is already looking at multiple potential paths for expanding the restaurant’s footprint. Right now, Habibi is exclusively takeout; in the future, Temple wants to have enough space to offer sit-down dining options, too.

He’s also hard at work expanding the menu, with hopes of getting northern Michiganders to fall in love with some of the more, shall we say, “exotic” aspects of Middle Eastern cuisine. So far, Habibi menu staples haven’t been so foreign to the American palate. The restaurant’s menu is packed with the familiar: dishes based around chicken and beef; hummus; naan bread; gyros; wraps. The most popular dish, butter chicken, is a global staple that just about anyone could love.

For Temple, though, starting the menu off in a more familiar vein was a strategic choice. Not only did that decision give him time to cut his teeth cooking Middle Eastern cuisine every day, but it also made Habibi easy to embrace even for people who had never tried shawarma or lamb curry before. Now, Temple wants to push the envelope a little more, and he’s starting by adding dishes based around types of meat that most American eaters have never tried — in any capacity.

Pushing the Culinary Envelope — Again
“We’ve just brought in camel meat, which has seven times the protein value of beef, and 30 percent less fat,” Temple says. “We also have kangaroo meat; I’ve got kangaroo burgers and kangaroo sirloins. And we have ostrich, too. Kangaroo and ostrich have the same protein profile as the camel meat and are much more beneficial [than beef]. I know of a couple other cities that are trying these meats, but if I can bring the awareness to Traverse City, I think we can see different cuisines on our plates here soon.”

Temple knows he’s likely to encounter some skepticism from customers as he rolls out these new menu items. Though these types of alternative protein sources are common overseas — Temple says authentic on-the-ground Middle Eastern cuisine is actually more likely to focus on camel shawarma than chicken shawarma — they’re also uncharted territory in much of the United States, especially outside of big cities.

So, to start, Temple is once again easing his clientele into the unfamiliar, this time by preparing exotic meats in not-so-exotic ways. You may never have had camel meat before, but try it as part of a double cheeseburger — or, as Temple calls it, a “double hump burger” — and it won’t taste that foreign. The same goes for ostrich steaks topped with wine mushroom sauce, or kangaroo meat presented as lean strips of sirloin.

Temple is confident that, if he can get customers to at least give the new items a try, people will be won over by the lean, flavorful meat and the favorable comparisons to beef in terms of health benefits. He even challenges customers to research those benefits online, to learn more about how camel, kangaroo, and ostrich compare to beef and chicken. 

“I think once people see the benefits to the protein and the comparison with beef, they'll say, ‘Wow, why weren’t we getting camel meat here all along?’” Temple says. “But it's going to weird people out for a while. Some people are like, ‘Wow, I'm not that daring yet.’ But other people are diving right in. I know the younger crowd is certainly diving in; they’re not holding back at all. I sold a bunch of camel burgers yesterday to the Central High School lunch crowd. It’s that older age group that's going to be more hesitant.” 

Find Habibi Middle Eastern Coney & Curry at 124 Cochlin St. in Traverse City. (231) 421-1873, www.habibimideastconey.com.

* Pictured above: Kangaroo sirloin with Arabic rice, braised cabbage, and fried kibbeh.

 

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