Hav & Mar Chef Fariyal Abdullahi’s Favorite Spots for Dining with a Crew
Where do chefs go and, more importantly, where do they love to eat? In Resy Regulars, we ask Resy chefs to tell us where they’re regulars.
In this edition, we’re chatting with Hav & Mar’s chef de cuisine, Fariyal Abdullahi, who initially turned down the job at the Chelsea restaurant helmed by acclaimed chef Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster fame.
In 2020, Abdullahi was back in her hometown of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when she received the call from Samuelsson: Would she be a part of his upcoming restaurant? Feeling burnt out from a hierarchical restaurant culture where she often found herself as the lone woman of color in most kitchens, she declined.
Then, he made her an offer she couldn’t resist: The opportunity to fuse her globally influenced cooking chops and management skills in a role where she could directly shape kitchen culture for the better.
Abdullahi’s cooking is indeed global in its scope. She first learned to cook from her mom in Ethiopia, then backpacked through 18 countries in Europe and Africa to “teach my palate.” She cooked alongside René Redzepi during a four-month internship at Noma in Copenhagen. She’s also a master of multi-tasking; while attending college at California State University in Long Beach, Calif., she managed 28 different T-Mobile stores, too.
She brings all of that expertise to Hav & Mar, and she’s making a difference: implementing zero-waste operations and building a work culture that promotes Black women and extols the very concept of a joyful kitchen. “We celebrate each other,” she says. “If someone makes something delicious, we won’t stop talking about it. We greet each other with so much love, it’s palpable.”
On Sundays, when the restaurant is closed, you’ll find her gathering her friends — both in and out of the restaurant industry — to eat. “I’ll send out a big group text that just says, ‘Hey, food adventure Sunday,’” she says. The itinerary changes from week to week; sometimes, they’ll head to a spot they just learned about and other times, they’ll head to one of Abdullahi’s favorite spots. Whether they head to pop-ups or brick-and-mortar restaurants, she always prefers to go with a group. “That way, I can taste everything on the menu.”
Here are Abdullahi’s go-to spots for group dining in New York.
1. Ramen by Rā
Multiple Locations
“Rāsheeda [Purdie] does the Ramen by Rā pop-ups, and she just finished her Rise + Dine series [in December] at Sommwhere on the Lower East Side. I was taking a lot of my friends so we could try all the different ramens that she had on her menu. Ramen is not something that you can order six of and have by yourself. So if you go as a group, everybody orders one of each, and you get to try a little bit of everything. She obviously specializes in ramen, but she puts her own New York twist to it, like the bacon, egg, and cheese ramen, or steak and egg ramen or gravlax ramen.
“So first of all, I’m Muslim; I’m unable to eat a lot of ramen because it has a pork base. But she veers on the healthier side with her cooking, so she has a lot of vegetarian broths but they’re still so rich. Then, she adds the umami from the gravlax. When she does steak and eggs, she does a soy egg. It looks like an egg, but it’s made from soybeans. She’s also had chimichurri and rosemary fingerling potatoes. Rosemary can take over the flavor of a dish so it’s usually used in meat — something that can bear the weight of that flavor — but she uses it in ramen and it works. She also has an everything egg drop [ramen], and it tasted like an everything bagel.
“I love how she goes out into the dining room and talks to every single diner. Her energy is so infectious. I’ve told her, ‘Obviously your food is the star of the show, but I want to keep coming back for your energy.’”
Follow Ramen by Rā on Instagram for information on their next pop-up.
2. Brittney Williams’ “Chef Stikxz” Pop-Ups
Multiple Locations
“Brittney Williams is a Jamaican chef and her pop-up is a nod to her Jamaican roots, but she does it in a fine dining way. I met her when she came to dine at Hav & Mar, and we got to talking, and she said she wants to be the first Jamaican chef with a Michelin star. She’s a private chef, but she does a lot of pop-ups.
“I went to one of her pop-ups in December where she teamed up with Appleton Estate on their Extraordinary Dinner series. She had a seven-course tasting menu for that dinner. And right on the invitation, it said cocktail attire. I was so excited because when you think of Jamaican food, you don’t really think of it as the kind of food where you show up in fancy attire; you tend to think of it as more casual homecooking, right? But she wants to celebrate Jamaican food as fine dining, too.
“She grows her own Scotch Bonnet peppers, and sources spices from Jamaica. At that dinner in December, she had a fluke crudo with soursop vinegar. It tasted so fresh; it transported me back to my last trip to Jamaica in 2022. I was on a beach, and the fisherman had just come back with a boat full of fish that went right into the kitchen.
“I also went to her pop-up on Feb. 5 at The Musket Room with our director of operations, Angela Bankhead, and Rāsheeda [Purdie] from Ramen by Rā. That was the first time I hung out with Rāsheeda outside of her pop-up; she’s friends with Angela. [This pop-up] was family-style with two long tables of about 20 people each. I left, having exchanged contacts with everybody at my table. Any time [Brittney] has a pop-up, I’ll be there.”
Follow Williams on Instagram for information on her next pop-up. You can buy tickets to her Feb. 22 pop-up at Momofuku Ko here.
3. Dawa’s
Woodside
“Dawa’s is a small family-owned business in Queens, and it’s one of my favorite restaurants. I go there once a week. I have a good relationship with Dawa [Bhuti, the chef and co-owner] now because most of the time I go, she’s there. I tell her that every time I eat her food, I feel like she’s giving me a hug.”
“I like to go in large groups because their portion sizes are pretty generous, and I like tasting everything. I’ve had everything here. My go-to is thenthuk. It’s a Tibetan noodle soup, and she makes it with bone marrow broth. It’s so rich and so fatty. And the noodle itself is so refreshing because there’s also daikon in there; you have the fresh and spicy. I also always order the momo. They have beef, chicken, and vegetable, and I get all three. I also get the chana and gwaramari with sunnyside-up eggs and black chickpeas, which I’ve never had before.”
Call (718)899-8629 to make a reservation.
4. Shukette
Chelsea
“I’m also a regular at Shukette. I moved to New York [in 2022] so anytime somebody comes to visit me, that’s the place that I take them. I recently went with a group of my Pakistani friends. It was interesting to see the overlap in all of our cultures. We were all like, ‘Wait a second. I recognize this food.’ There was a lamb tagine with couscous, and it reminded us of lamb biryani; it tasted very similar, but instead of rice, it had couscous.
“But my favorite thing at Shukette is the bread basket. [Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja’s] bread program is crazy. There’s one Moroccan bread called frena. It’s so fluffy I always tell my friends, ‘This should be a pillow.’ And then she brushes it with garlic confit, and I’m like, ‘Yes. Please give me more.’ And then the frena with the labneh — that’s the killer combination. Labneh can be so rich, right? It is so thick and has so much fat. But with the mandarin supremes on top, it’s just so fresh. It cuts that heaviness and just makes it so much lighter.”
Follow Fariyal Abdullahi on Instagram.
Hav & Mar is open Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m.
Caroline Shin is a food journalist, and founder of the Cooking with Granny video and workshop series spotlighting immigrant grandmothers. Watch her award-winning show on YouTube, and follow her on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.
