Love Tastes Like Falafel
Mid-pandemic, Food Land Market’s meals help Afghan refugees feel at home in Boise
Story by Lex Nelson
Every Thursday, Hana Mutlak oversees a delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables to her Boise Bench grocery store, Food Land Market. It’s a busy few hours — Mutlak dashes back and forth through the shop, pivoting between the produce and the register. But one November Thursday in 2021, something made the rush even more memorable. A voice on the phone asked: “Would you like to make meals for Afghan refugees?”
The caller was Cathy Knipe, the former chief operating officer of Boise nonprofit City of Good (COG), which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to feed Boiseans in need. The cause immediately hit home for Mutlak: She said yes.
Cooking and packing meals for refugees brought Mutlack’s own story full circle. In 2007 she and her family arrived in Boise as refugees themselves. They hailed from Iraq, not Afghanistan, but they too crossed the ocean to outrun a war.
“We are refugees, they are refugees,” she said. “And [COG] is helping them. So we are working with each other. It’s not about having business, as much as I appreciate COG helping the new arrivals. [It’s] because I was here and I have been helped, so I like to help somebody else.”
That first week Mutlak and her team cooked 56 meals from scratch. She expected the effort to last a month, but COG extended it through December, then through June 2022. Once, Mutlak made 181 meals in a single day. COG delivers the rice, shawarma, and falafel from Food Land to each refugee’s hotel room or apartment.
“It’s the same food we have on the menu [at Food Land], and sometimes honestly I put more in than what it should be because I feel they are hungry and they are not cooking at their hotel, so I’m really taking care of them,” Mutlak said.
Food Land and COG’s other partners, Ishtar Market & Restaurant and Kabob House, provide refugees familiar meals in an unfamiliar city. Mutlak goes above and beyond by adding touches like hot salsa to the packages that aren’t part of her own Iraqi cuisine. She also hired three Afghan refugees to work in Food Land’s restaurant. Her family helps them with everything from transportation to opening new bank accounts.
“We are trying to make everything easy for them,” she said.
Working with COG is a new experience for Mutlak, but she said she would be “more than happy to do it again and again.” Giving back lets her embrace the city just as it embraced her family when a mass stabbing of refugees shocked Boise in 2018.
“At that time we got much help, so since that time we’ve felt we are part of [the] Boise community,” she said. “That’s when we opened our restaurant … I had people who, they helped us put the shelves together to create the place. So I really appreciated that.”
The good will of Mutlak’s family is palpable in Food Land’s meticulously stocked shelves, bright coffee shop, and welcoming restaurant — destinations for both Americans and Arabic people.
“All of us, we are building Boise,” she said.
