Mary Karam, Segean Karam, November, 20, 2019

Title

interviewee

Mary Karam

Segean Karam

interviewer

Emma Dambek

Mary Horabik

Date

2019-11-20

Subject

Bakery

Business

Cooking

Family

Heritage

Immigration

Karam's Middle Eastern Bakery

Karrat's Restaurant

Lebanon

Lebanese dishes

Lebanese desserts

Oneida County Historical Hall of Fame

Traditions

Utica College

Utica, New York

War

Yorkville, New York

Description

Tucked away in Yorkville, New York, is a Lebanese Bakery owned by Mr. Segean Karam and Mrs. Mary Ann Karam. The Karams have operated the bakery for nearly 40 years, which is just about the length of time they have been married.

During this interview, Segean and Mary talk about Lebanon, the bakery, their children, and the love they have for each other. After meeting in Lebanon, the Karams began their lives together in the Utica area and started the bakery, which has had a large impact on many people in the area.

Segean Karam was born in Sarine, Lebanon. He was one of eight children to their parents who owned and rented land. He became a police officer at eighteen and patrolled the ski slopes in the area to protect the skiers from any people who may have wanted to cause harm. At twenty-seven, Segean moved to the United States where he married Mary Ann Karrat. Mary Ann Karrat was born in New Hartford, New York to a Lebanese couple who owned a bakery in the area. She went to New Hartford High School and attended Utica College where she received her degree in social work.

After marrying in 1979, they began to work in a bakery that was owned by Segean and his brothers. They had two children in the early 1980s, John and Christopher. Mary and Segean eventually bought out his brothers nearly twenty years ago to completely own the bakery. They have expanded since the early 2000s, and now have twice the space for customers in their bakery as well as a new bread baking system.

Transcription

ED = Emma Dambek
MH = Mary Horabik
SK = Segean Karam
MK = Mary Karam

[START OF TRACK 1, 0:00]

MH:
This is Mary Horabik and Emma Dambek with Mr. Segean Karam and Mrs. Mary Karam of Yorkville, New York. We are in Yorkville. It is November 20, 2019, and we are interviewing for the Cooperstown Graduate Program's Community Oral History Program. So why don't you introduce yourselves?
SK:
My name is Segean Karam. I own Karam's Bakery on Campbell Ave.
MK:
And you were born in Lebanon.
SK:
Right.
MK:
My name is Mary Ann Karam. I'm Segean's wife. I was born here in Utica, New York, and Segean was born in Lebanon.
MH:
Where did each of you grow up?
SK:
I grew up in Lebanon. Sarine, Lebanon. Up until like twenty-seven years old. I came to the United States.
MK:
And what year did you come? Ok, Mary Ann Karam. I grew up here in New Hartford, New York. I went to New Hartford High School, graduated in 1975. And went to Utica College and got my degree in social work and graduated in 1979. We got married in August 1979, and of course Segean opened the bakery with his brothers in 1975. But after maybe 1998 or 1997 we bought out his brothers and we have run the business ourselves for almost twenty-five years.
ED:
So where did you guys meet? Can you tell us the story about how you guys met and everything like that?
SK:
Her father bought a lot of land in our town and they used to go every summer to Lebanon and that's where I met her. I was their driver all the time and that's how we met each other.
MK:
Yeah, we met in Lebanon, but it wasn't until years later that he came over here - 1973. Like I said it took a few years, but we finally got together and got married in 1979. We had two sons. The oldest is John. He was born in 1981. The second son was born in 1983 - Christopher. John lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's been there about fourteen years and he sells medical equipment for the brain. He does very well. He's a very intelligent, warm-hearted, and great human being. That's what makes us proud. Our younger son is an M.D., a doctor. He specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation. He's married to his wonderful wife, our daughter-in-law Kathleen. They have two beautiful children. We have two beautiful grand-children: Thomas, who is seven, and Reese, who is six. They are just the apple of our eye. We love them so much. They live in South Jersey in Morristown, Jersey. Right on the Philadelphia border so it is a five-hour drive for us, but we go when we can and they come when they can.
ED:
So, what did you do when you were in Lebanon when you visited?
MK:
Oh, we would have a good time.
SK:
They would go in the summer.
MK:
We would go the whole summer. My father built a villa out there because he [Segean] is from the same town as my father was born. So, he built a beautiful villa out there. It was all modernized and we used to get off the bus the last day of school and we would stay there until the first of September, just enough days to get back and get ready to start school again. So, it was really fun. We still have the same, my brothers, sisters, and I, still have friends that we keep in touch with that we met way back when we were teenagers. It's just a wonderful experience. There has been a lot of turmoil over there, so it has been hard for us to go back and actually see our friends, so they would come here. Family would come here because of the war, but they did rebuild it and it's a beautiful country. They called it the Paris of the Middle East–Beirut. And Lebanon itself, it was just a beautiful area. It was just a great experience. My siblings and I both feel that going there every summer like that just brought a lot of–I can't think of the word. It just helped us a lot to understand how people lived there and here.
MH:
Segean, why don't you tell us a little bit about Lebanon?
SK:
Lebanon is beautiful and like I said I left when I was twenty-seven. Before that when I was eighteen, I joined the police department. They chose twenty of us to be on the ski patrol around the people so they'll be skiing peacefully because they see the police watch because the villagers will come and attack the players and stuff like that. So, I spent eight years of my life in the police department. It was great and I came here.
MH:
What motivated you to come to America?
SK:
My wife.
MK:
Yeah that's what brought him here, me. [laughter]
ED:
Have you lived here in Yorkville?
MK:
We live in Whitesboro, so it's just ten minutes away.
ED:
But you've lived here since you've been married?
SK:
Yes.
MK:
Well, we've been married forty years this past August. August 11, 1979, so it's been forty years. We celebrated our fortieth anniversary and it has been great. Like I say, he started the business. It is a long time for a business to run and thrive because it seems like every time you turn around some place is closing up. Yes, there are three or four different places that serve Middle Eastern food in town, but we're sort of unique because we're a bakery and there's no other bakeries around here and people come from all over. They will come from Colorado. We have this couple and they say please open up a place in Colorado because there's nothing like Karam's Bakery anywhere. “I've had hummus all over the world,” he said, “and yours is the best.” So, it really makes you feel good and we really appreciate our customers because that's what keeps us going and they appreciate us because they say your food is so fresh and made daily and we appreciate that because there aren't too many places that you can get actual Lebanese food. Ours is pretty much like grandma's is what people say. Is that right, Segean?
SK:
Yeah.
ED:
Is there a large Lebanese population here in the area?
SK:
I will say yes. They were from way way back and most of them were born here. Their parents came to this area, most of them they were not educated and here there were lots of factories and they would come and start working in the factories. I would say maybe one hundred families or something.
MK:
Oh, more than that.
SK:
But they settled here because there were a lot of factories.
MK:
Yeah, but their children and their grandchildren all were educated.
SK:
That's why they work hard.
MK:
They worked hard and educated their children. Not that doctors and lawyers and whatever but they're all educated, good people. I feel proud to be Lebanese and to have this establishment because there's not too many people, like I said before, or places. People come in here and they're like family and they really appreciate us and we appreciate them.
SK:
Yeah.
ED:
And speaking of family, Mary, did your parents meet in Lebanon or did they meet here?
MK:
Ok, my dad was born in Lebanon and he came here and settled in the Utica area in the 1930s, I think. He was in his twenties too, almost thirty years old. They worked very hard and opened up Karrat's Restaurant in New Hartford. That was a very well-known, popular restaurant for almost forty years. He opened it up with my uncle and my mom. My mom, of course, her parents were Lebanese. Both born in Lebanon, but she was born here. But she spoke the language better than my dad because she learned it from her parents, I would assume, but everyone thought she was born in Lebanon. Then her sibling also all spoke the language. But my dad would always say, “I want you to have a good education.” So, we all went to college. It was important back in my day, but you don't have to have an education to succeed in life is even what my dad would say either. And these days it seems like it is better to have something under your belt.
MH:
What about your parents, Segean? Talk to us a little more about your family back in Lebanon.
SK:
My father and mother got married very early, that's how it happened there. We had a lot of land to lease to people and they gave us half of whatever they would produce.
MK:
Potatoes.
SK:
Everything. Potatoes, wheat, cucumbers, tomatoes. All kinds of vegetables. They wanted to educate us too. We were eight. We used to live next to this college in another town and my parents in another town so they could educate us in the city. All my brothers are here and my sisters, one of them she is in Lebanon. But we were all very educated and that was the dream, my father's dream. My mother came here after my father died. He died when he was 65 years old in Lebanon. My mother came here in 1981, and she stayed until four years ago, she died. She was ninety-five.
MH:
How have your respective Lebanese families played a role in your bakery?
MK:
Everybody has their own job and whatever but I have a brother who helps me here. His [Segean] two brothers did run it with him and his one brother was a teacher in Oriskany High School for how many years?
SK:
Thirty-two.
MK:
Thirty-two years.
SK:
Physics and math.
MK:
Physics and math. He was the one who originally opened it with him. Then another brother who was here and then went to Syracuse, New York when we bought them out and opened up a business, a bakery, a Lebanese bakery in Syracuse. But as far as anybody actually working in the business, no, no one. But of course, everybody around three, four o'clock everybody piles in and sits around.
SK:
My brothers, my cousins.
MK:
My brothers, sisters, cousins. But if we do need anybody of family and we have to go somewhere, they're always willing to pitch in. On holidays when we get very busy, they are always there for us. So it's really great to have family here in the area. I feel fortunate that all my siblings are here in the area and his siblings are all here except a sister in Lebanon.
SK:
And a brother.
MK:
Oh yeah, then his brother. I forgot he lives in Charlotte near our son. The two brothers did start the business with him [Segean] so it was nice. He worked very hard. He would get up at one am in the morning because the machinery was all old. It was individual, the cutter, the proofer.
SK:
Plus we open at nine o'clock. By nine o'clock, everything has to be ready for people to buy. So we figured it out if you come by one thirty, one o'clock by nine o'clock we have everything ready for the people.
MK:
Twenty-some years ago now, I always say he took, but really we took a chance and opened. He went to Lebanon, purchased an all brand new, state-of-the-art bread machine. And we added this room here and it's a whole full basement because it was only that side of the room, of course they [the listeners of this recording] don't know but. And we took that chance and the good Lord was good to us and we took out the loans and with our business were able to pay them off, which sometimes people can't do because they just can't keep up. So, we feel so good about this, having this new addition, because it made our customers more comfortable, and it gave us more kitchen space. And of course, the brand new, state-of-the-art bread machine, which it only really takes one person to put the dough in and it comes out at the end.
ED:
How many food things do you guys make every day?
SK:
I will say twenty kinds–food and bread. Out of the dough we make a lot. We make the turnovers, another kind.
MK:
The spinach pies, the meat pies. None of our dough has preservatives in it, so people love that aspect because of the breads and the spinach and meat, and we make all kinds of different things with the dough. How many loaves come out?
SK:
Like 6,000 loaves an hour.
MK:
An hour.
SK:
Because it's a continuous operation. There is a distance of ten seconds between every loaf and they go by the oven within ten seconds and then they're done.
MK:
And then every day we have different specials. We have our soups, and we make all the Lebanese foods: the hummus, the tabbouleh, the baba ganoush, the grape leaves with meat or without meat, all kinds of bean dishes, all vegetarian bean dishes. If we do have anything that has meat it's the freshly ground sirloin.
[There was a brief conversation between an employee and Segean]
MK:
And we make our pastries–our baklava, and our date cookies. We used to make the halawa, but we buy it now, but it's the best. It's very very tasty. And we offer all kinds of Lebanese food.
SK:
No, no it's ok. Go ahead.
MK:
Every day. Like I said, everything is made fresh daily. And if we do have anything left at the end of the night, we freeze it because there's no preservatives. So, if we run out of an item, and somebody says “Do you have a spinach pie in the freezer?” We can say yes, so they are fresh frozen. Because it just depends on the day, sometimes they go, sometimes they don't. But most of the time they go, so we are happy about that.
MH:
Tell us more about the original way to make bread, before this 6,000 loaf [machine].
SK:
Before that, we used to make, there is a mixer back there, but then they used to put them in the baskets. So, two guys would be on the rounder, take the bread and put it on the baskets. Then there are three people on the sheeter to make it [the bread] round and thin. And there are two people, one with the oven to put the bread in the oven and one to take it from the other side. So maybe it will take five to six people to do the whole thing, which now it is one or two people.
MH:
What job did you do?
SJ:
Look over everything. For every little thing, they ask me and I have to take care of it. From fixing the oven, from cooking what's going in the food, all that stuff.
MK:
Yeah, I was very surprised how talented he is. He would always tell me that being a police officer over there each one of the officers would have to cook a meal every night. So that's where he learned.
SK:
Out there in the boondocks, there are no restaurants, no grocery stores. In the summer, the villagers would bring us fruit and vegetables. We invented foods. We gotta eat! So we used to cook. Say if we are eight in the station, today my job is to cook and tomorrow it is to wash dishes. Day after, guard the station. Stuff like that. That's how I became talented with food and different things.
MK:
Yeah, he learned not only from his mom. And plus I think you really have it in you because he can come up with, he can take any vegetable or any meat and make a great meal out of it. A Lebanese meal. For instance, yesterday, we have our spinach green special on Fridays and he took the tops
SK:
The leaves of the turnips.
MK:
The tops of the turnips
SK:
The leaves.
MK:
Yeah. And he made a green dish and we all went crazy for it. And that was just yesterday. He can do anything. He is really amazing.
SK:
Thank you.
MK:
He is the one, he is a Lebanese chef. But of course his mom, he learned from her but he was away all the time. Like he said being in school, they wanted him educated so he had to go live away from home.
SK:
Yeah.
MK:
Even for high school days. That's what they did back then if you wanted an education. And it was mostly in French and English
SK:
Yeah, French. And Arabic.
MK:
Mostly French and Arabic. When he was born, the country was under French rule. Like his name is Segean. Segean, that's French. And his sister's Claudia and those are French names. I would assume that's how they named them. So I think his experience there, his bringing-up really helped him here in this country because he really worked hard. I mean I could never get up at 1 a.m. and he did. He got up at 1 a.m. and he provided for me and our children. And we really had a great life. You don't have to have millions of dollars but the kids didn't go without anything but it's because of his hard work, like I say he wanted to put this addition on. I was a little scared, but I have to give myself credit because without me too making sure that the bills got paid when they were supposed to every month or every week or whenever they were due. I've been very fortunate to have the funds because we have a few rental properties now and it's just very hard. People cannot pay even their rent anymore it seems. They start off so well and all of a sudden. So I think his work ethic, yes from his parents because they both worked hard over there. And me too, my family. I mean my parents worked so hard but I was one of the only kids who had a new car by sixteen years old at New Hartford High School where I was just a normal kid. I wasn't a son or daughter of an attorney or a doctor, but my parents worked hard and they were honest and they succeeded. And I think that really rubbed off on me, and I feel my children have succeeded because of that. And like I said before, not only in their occupations, but as human beings and as good people. Everyone says to me, “Oh, you must be so proud, your son's a doctor,” and I say, “Of course I'm proud of them, but I'm more proud that he's a good human being,” and he really is. Both my sons are, and my daughter-in-law. We feel very fortunate because a lot of people are greedy, but these kids aren't.
MH:
Can you tell us a little more about your sons and daughter-in-law?
[START OF TRACK 2, 0:00]
MK:
The oldest son, John, he lives in Charlotte, like I said and he sells the medical equipment. When growing up, both our sons were very athletic and they would go from baseball, to basketball, to football. And they were both fortunate enough to be on the varsity teams and make the teams and the travel teams. My older son, John, tried out for AAU Basketball, that's a travel team. I think it's all over the country, these teams. He loved, especially my older son John, he really loved sports, especially basketball. He excelled in football. He's not a big, huge kid, but oh boy is he fast. Our Whitesboro High School here in Whitesboro, New York is a very athletic school and they always come in first for all their [competitions], like we are in the Tri-Valley league. Then of course John went to college at Oswego State University in Oswego, New York. He played basketball for them. He was one of their point guards. And he majored in business administration and minored in coaching. He was a math whiz, he was never really a science person but I'm amazed, we both are, because he has outsold the three different companies he's worked for, the medical equipment. He could sell no more because he would get the top awards. They would fly him into wherever and just recently he came in second in the country for sales for Newton Neurology, which sells the medical equipment for the brain. And he won a trip to Spain and quite a bit of money as a bonus. Because he loves selling, he loves talking to people, and he loves people. I think that's what's made him succeed and I think he takes after his dad, takes after Segean, because he, Segean, can sell anything. He'll buy used equipment. He'll go to auctions and buy them. He also does that and he has a knack. I say he has it in him. With my son John, obviously you have to know your business when you're selling a million dollar piece of equipment. You have to understand the brain and all that. So I think he would get an A++++ now in his biology, or chemistry, or whatever because it is something that he has always wanted to do and he just loves it. And my son Christopher, of course, when he was in second grade his friends would call him “Doc.” He always wanted to be a doctor. So he went to Siena for pre-med. Siena College in Albany, New York, in Loudonville, New York, Albany area. That's where he met his wife so that's a good thing. He went to, I want to say Siena is affiliated with St. George's School of Medicine in Grenada. He went there for the first two years for the books. The second two years of the St. George's School of Medicine has exclusive rights to Mount Sinai New York Methodists and a few others in New York City and so that's where he spent his second two years in New York City doing his, I think rotations they call it because it's four years of medical school. Then in 2010, they got married. Kathleen. And she graduated from Siena and she got recruited. She was in business and she worked for Nestle Corporation. They recruit Siena College's students at graduation and she got a job right out of college. She worked from home and she did very well. She helped Chris because they lived in, he did his residency in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. There's different buildings but this was the Georgetown Hospital of Rehabilitation in D.C. So, they lived there while she worked from home and did very well. And after they had the second child, Reese, daycare was going to be like $2,000 or something a month, so she stayed home. But you can't work from home with two children. But she is a very smart and beautiful person in and out. Then they had Thomas when he was, what year was he born? [laughter] I forgot.
SK:
That's ok.
MK:
I should know that, I'm his grandmother. And now they live, like I said, in Morristown, New Jersey. Right on the Philadelphia border. Everybody says Cherry Hill, they know where that is. And Chris sort of runs his own business now. He used to work with this group but now he goes into the rehab centers, into the hospitals. He's their doctor. So he loves what he does and he loves helping people get well. It's from the brain down to the toes for rehab. And when you're going places like rehab centers, people are there to get better versus sometimes when you're in an office they may not want to get better. So both boys and my daughter-in-law succeeded. Like I say, they are good people and we are very proud of them.
MH:
How did you balance raising two kids and both working at the bakery?
MK:
It was sort of hard. The first few years, I stayed home with the kids. But when they got older, it was still a challenge because sometimes, even in college sometimes I would have to go to John's game in Oswego and come home at two in the morning. And he [Segean] would stay here and go to Christopher's basketball game here at Whitesboro High School.
SK:
She would tape one game and I'd tape the other and we would come and watch them. both.
Sometimes the coach would take her video because she taped from A to Z, everything. So he would take the tape and let the kids watch it so they could see what mistakes they made.
MK:
We tried not to miss any of their games. And we enjoyed it too. But as they got to high school, they would come here and help us, even though they were busy with sports and studying. They would come here and they would help us on holidays, on weekends. But when you go to college, so after eighteen they would, of course, come home for the summers and work here with us. Made it a lot easier because they were good here too, working here, helping us. All our customers miss them being that they are not around anymore. “Oh, we hope John and Chris are coming home for Thanksgiving.” We said, “Oh, of course they'll be home.” Then we all gather here. It's like a family reunion, family and friends. All the friends, all the cousins come in from all over and they come on Saturday. Thursday is Thanksgiving, Friday we will be home because we are closed. Then Saturday, we'll have this whole room here, 40-50 people in here for breakfast and lunch and everybody gets together and it really makes it nice. They try to get home too once in a while just to come home, but it is hard. Everybody has their own thing now that they do and their own jobs and life changes but it's all good because everybody is happy and healthy.
ED:
So you both mentioned having siblings in the area, would you mind telling us more about them and what they're doing?
MK:
Sure.
SK:
I had two brothers here, and one like I said was a teacher and he retired. And the other one he was a baker like me in Syracuse and he retired. I have a sister who works in the casino [Turning Stone?]. She's in charge of the restaurant and all that. And that's it.
ED:
What was it like growing up with so many siblings?
SK:
Well, it was a lot of fun. The oldest would take care of the rest and every time like the oldest went somewhere, then the second one would take care of the rest with our parents. That's how we grew up.
MH:
Are you the oldest or somewhere in the middle?
SK:
I am the sixth from the top, but after me there were four. But two died, they were young. At that time in Lebanon, there was influenza and they didn't know about it. Kids would die very young. But we were eight kids at the end. Three girls and five boys. And like I say, it was continuous, the oldest would take care of the youngest.
MK:
He had a lot of responsibility too, being one of the older ones still in Lebanon.
SK:
All of them after me, like all the oldest then me, came here and I was supporting the family. There would be three girls and a boy. The baby is the boy.
MK:
He said, he told you, he's in Charlotte. And he's an inspector with U.S. Air. You told them?
SK:
Yeah.
MK:
One of my brothers has passed, but my other older brother he helped run our family business, the Karrats restaurant. But when we closed, he took advantage instead of opening up another place. He took advantage of the casino [Turning Stone?]. He works there and he's been there since they opened. And his wife also works there. And my sister, Theresa Karam, she's also a Karam because she married Segean's cousin; they run the Phoenician restaurant here in New Hartford, right up the street. They, my sister, has six sons. A few of them help her and they've been in business quite a few years, maybe thirty years. They have very nice Lebanese food too. It's completely different from here. It's a restaurant [the Phoenician restaurant], it's a restaurant. My brother…
[TRACK 2, 15:57: pauses to answer customer question]
MK:
My brother, Danny, helps me here. If it wasn't for him sometimes, you know, having family when I have to go away or when we go away on trips, he's here. He's always willing to help me. That's about all for family members that I have, siblings.
ED:
Growing up, did you have any fun family traditions? Like during the holidays or for birthdays or things like that?
MK:
Probably just like most of us, you know? For Thanksgiving we would have the traditional Turkey. And ham and all of that. We'd also have the Lebanese food. That's what I still do today. I do Thanksgiving every year. We always have the traditional Thanksgiving. My turkey is 35 to 40 pounds [laughs]. We always have the grape leaves and the kibbe, and the tabbouleh. It has to be on the table. Otherwise it's not officially a Thanksgiving dinner without having the Lebanese food too. Just like my parents. And Christmas, you know, I was brought up here and my kids, so it's a traditional Christmas. We all get together. My sister always does Christmas dinner. We all help each other with all the food and the traditions of opening presents and having all our Lebanese holiday cookies. They're a lot of work but we have to have them. We do it because we have to. We love doing it.
MH:
Can you explain what some of these food items are? Like tabbouleh?
SK:
The tabbouleh is an appetizer dish. Cracked wheat, parsley, tomatoes, lemon juice, and…
MK:
Olive oil.
SK:
Olive oil. And it's all mixed together.
MK:
It's a salad. It's a Lebanese salad.
SK:
We have the hummus dip. It's garlic, lemon, salt, and tahini sauce.
MK:
Tahini paste. With the chickpeas. And the baba ganoush, we take our fresh eggplant and we bake it. Then we peel it. And we add that in with the tahini, the lemon juice, garlic instead of the chickpeas. That's baba ganoush. We have our grape leaves, with meat or without meat. That's the lean ground sirloin, the meat, with the rice and the spices. All spice.
SK:
Meat and lemon.
MK:
They are rolled and cooked in a big pot. We put fresh garlic over it for flavoring. We fill the pot with water to the top. Then we have the meatless grape leaves which instead, it has no meat of course, it has the parsley, chickpeas, and onions and spices. Those are rolled.
SK:
Lemon, again.
MK:
Yeah, lemon. We use a lot of lemon and garlic. We have our bean dishes; they are very popular. We have the kidney beans, the lubieh[loubieh?], which is the pulled[pole?] bean. We have the okra and we have the peas. They're all cooked individually in a tomato sauce. No meat, they're vegetarian. And they're over rice. Very popular.
SK:
Separate dishes.
MK:
Yeah, separately, of course. But we have the four different bean dishes. And then we have different specials. On Fridays we have lentils and rice, mujaddara. That's the lentils and rice. We crystallize the onions first and put the water in. Let it boil.
SK:
We make the turnovers, spinach pie, meat pie, a sausage roll, a zaatar, which is all herbs. It looks like spices but there's no spice.
MK:
It's an herb bread, it's an herb bread.
SK:
It looks like a pizza but it's herbs.
MK:
Thyme, oregano, sesame, sumac. We mix it with the olive oil. We put it over the pita. And it's really a tasty bread. A very tasty bread.
SK:
For dessert, we have the baklava. And we have the halawa. And the rice pudding. Which is rice -
MK:
Our rice pudding is very popular.
SK:
Which is milk and rice and a little sugar. Nothing else.
MK:
We don't use any kind of preservatives in anything. We also have string cheese. Very popular, the Lebanese cheese. It's like a rope and you pull it apart. We sell that. We used to make it, but you know, there's just so much going on now that we don't have time. So we have a special cheese factory a couple of hours away. We go there, he goes six hours, back and forth it seems, to pick it up. We get it done fresh and then we freeze it. We take a little out at a time.
SK:
Then we have the coffee, the Lebanese coffee and the regular American coffee. The Lebanese tea, like you had some. All kinds of drinks, like beverages. Yeah.
MK:
We also have shelves of groceries. So that the people, and it's not only the Lebanese people or the Syrian people or whatever, or any Middle Eastern person. It's American people too, quote unquote, that make grape leaves, their own grape leaves, their own hummus. They come and buy the chickpeas. They buy the jars of grape leaves so they can roll their own. We have all the spices that we use in all of our dishes. We also have, not only the herbs, we have pomegranate juice. Which is very big now in I think in all cultures. It gives it that nice, what is it, kind of flavor?
SK:
Tangy. It's like a lemony taste.
MK:
Tangy, tangy, taste.
SK:
We have the rose water and the orange water.
MK:
We sell all the ingredients that you make the baklava with, the phyllo dough. We're like a little grocery store too, for all of those items. And if somebody wants walnuts, we sell them walnuts, that goes in them. The lentils, if they want to make lentils and rice, the rice, we sell all so that people don't have to go to the store for a special trip. They'll come here and buy it while they're picking up their breads they'll pick up supplies. Or they'll come for lunch and they'll eat lunch and then they'll take their groceries home with them. It brings them here for lunch, which is very nice too. Convenient for them and nice for us that they're able to do that. They say, “What if you guys weren't here? Where would we get all this stuff?” They're appreciative of that. And we get a lot of what we use here, the tahini, we get it in a big forty pound pail because we go through pails a day of tahini. Because we also sell to our local grocery stores and the farms, the orchards.
SK:
And restaurants.
MK:
And restaurants. Other Lebanese restaurants and other Greek restaurants take our breads. And a lot of them pick it up themselves. They come and get it every day. Whenever they need it. But like I say, we have the small jars of grape leaves for our customers but we also get the forty pound pails of grape leaves. That's a lot of grape leaves in one of those big barrels. All that stuff we go to New Jersey, in Paterson. It's a big Middle Eastern community, warehouses with every nationality. So not only Middle Eastern, they sell all kinds of, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, all. There's this one big store that you could find, you could walk in there, it's not a wholesale, it's a store. You find every nationality's food. And the stuff to prepare and spices to prepare the foods. But that's like a five-hour drive from here. Sometimes we have our groceries delivered through a local delivery company.
SK:
Trucking company.
MK:
Trucking company. And sometimes, we have time, we go ourselves. Because we have a nice big cargo van. We pick up the stuff from there. And that way he can choose and see, it's easier for him to see what he wants. Although he has his list ready and puts it in. It's nice to go around to all those, it reminds me of Lebanon. Because they have the jewelry stores there. As a kid, I had forgot to say, as I was younger, eighteen was the last time I went there. I was eighteen years old. And that's when the war [Lebanese Civil War] had broken out. And we were, to that day the war broke out, prior, we were walking the beautiful streets of resorts at two in the morning with our cousins and our friends and our family. The next day it was deserted because they started throwing those grenades. That's when the war broke out. That was in '75. They have streets and streets of gold, gold jewelry, jewelry stores. Paterson, New Jersey sort of reminds me of that because you can get anything there. You can get any kind of bangles, necklaces, crosses, our Cedar of Lebanon, it is our symbol. They have so many beautiful things. It really is a really neat place to go. And you can, like I say, find anything. It's streets and streets of all kinds of different [things]. One store would be just pastries, Lebanese pastries. One store for the water pipes. It's a tradition in Lebanon. The women and the men both smoke the water pipe. They have stores and stores of beautiful water pipes. I've never smoked a cigarette in my life but I collect them. I have table water pipes and
[START OF TRACK 3, 0:00]
MK:
they're just so beautiful. Different stores like that, it's really nice to be so close to some place like that. Even New York City, when my dad and uncle and parents ran Karrat's restaurant. We used to go to Brooklyn, New York to buy our supplies. It's easier to get into New Jersey. I think that's why he [Segean] would rather go there and purchase our supplies there.
MH:
Describe a typical day for the bakery for you all.
SK:
Well, my days now, I come at six-thirty. There'll be friends and cousins [here]. We sit, we have coffee and the zaatar. In the meantime, I'll be watching inside. They'll come till like, nine o'clock. At nine o'clock there'll be another group. They come and they have coffee and all of that.
MK:
The group is family and friends. Everybody is just amazed. It doesn't fail. They're here exactly six o'clock. The table is set. They know he brings out the zaatar bread but they stretch it. They put it through the oven so it's crispy and thin. And they make the Lebanese tea. And eggs, or whatever. The labneh is a traditional Lebanese breakfast here. It's a dried yogurt. Labneh and olives and zaatar. They cut up a big plate of tomatoes and cucumbers, all the vegetables. But it's sort of after all these years, it's…
SK:
I have a doctor who is a surgeon. He gets sometimes ten or fifteen surgeries a day in ears, nose, and throat. And if he doesn't come in the morning and have breakfast here and relax for half an hour, he can't do anything in there.
MK:
He's here at six am.
SK:
“I gotta come and do that.”
MK:
He's a well-known surgeon in the area. He comes, he's here six o'clock. He says that's what gets him through his surgeries. He relaxes a good half hour to almost an hour.
SK:
You see, we sit and talk, all the guys. About what happened in Lebanon, what happened here, this and that.
MK:
So, officially the bakery opens at nine. But like I say
SK:
As long as I am here, anybody comes.
MK:
As long as he's here, which he usually gets here around six, he says six thirty but he's here at six. Because he's up at five. He had some health issues in February, he ended up with a piercing of his artery in his lung when he had a pacemaker put in in Syracuse at St. Joe's. Of course, you know, it was a mistake, I guess things happen. They sort of misdiagnosed him a few times. This past March, April, and May, and almost to June, he was out of commission. So I had to get here at six for the first three months. Luckily, we have our family and friend doctors who got together and got him well again. That was a setback for us, we didn't know if we were going to sell or what we had to do because he was just so so sick. The kids said, “Maybe that's what you should do.” Thank god he came back. Even at the end of July he had another setback. I know I sort of got off [topic], but because if we're not here, yes, I have my brother to help us but when the owners aren't here, I just think that…
[TRACK 3, 5:08]
SK:
They want to see you. They want to talk to you. And I go to every table. And if I don't go to every table or if she didn't, they say “What's wrong with them?”
MK:
Why didn't they come over?
SK:
So, we go to every table.
MK:
People, that's what they like.
SK:
Joke, and all that.
MK:
We get very busy for lunch time. We only had the room over there for all those years. We don't know how we did it. How people used to wait in line. Now it's a convenience too for them. We did this for the customers too not only us. And between from now you'll see people walking in and getting stuff to go. Four o'clock it starts for people taking dinner home. We close at five so we're not a dinner place. But they start at four am, the baker is here at four am in the morning. It makes it for a long day for him [Segean]. For me, I try to get my bookwork done. We own these houses and businesses around here, across the street, so it takes a lot of time to sit down and pay your bills for those places. Not only keep up with your own business here and your own home. So I stay home in the mornings and do all that and take care of my home. Whatever else I have to do. So he's here with the employees. We have very nice employees who've been with us for years. They're good people. They appreciate having a job and we appreciate them because the customers know them. And they're just as close to them as they are to us. People like it when they sit down and they only have half an hour for lunch and know they know they can sit down quickly because there's all these tables here now with the addition. I'll have the usuals before they sit down and within five, ten minutes they'll have their meal. So that makes it really nice for them. And for us. If they [the customers] say “Not the usual” then we know that they're going to expand their horizons a little and try something new. Because sometimes when you get used to eating something, like I know when I go for Chinese I always order shrimp and broccoli, that's all I order because that's all I know. And so that's all. That's what the customers here just love it because everybody knows, they go it's sort of like a Cheers, everybody knows your name. That's what the customers say. It's kind of a great run for us so far, you know, running the business. People just can't believe how many years we've been here and how consistent are food is. They just think it's amazing that it tastes the same every time. It doesn't happen often they say. We have our recipes and we go by them, every time, every morning when everything is made. Because we don't put preservatives the food has to be made fresh daily. It's more healthy for us. That's what they like about Karam's.
ED:
So, aside from the bakery, what else are you guys involved in here in the community?
MK:
We're the longest running, one of the three longest running, we do the biggest fundraiser for hospice. It's called the Epicurean Delight and it's held every year in the spring. And they raise the most money for here, locally. And he's been chairperson maybe…
SK:
Four or five times.
MK:
Four or five times we've chaired it.
SK:
There are three chairmen, honorary chairmen. Three of us, every once in a while, will get the oldest chairman's and the hospice when they start like, twenty-seven years ago, twenty-eight years ago.
MK:
No, I thought they had their thirtieth? Thirty years it's been.
SK:
Well, anyway.
MK:
So that's one of the biggest…
SK:
And we do ours free, and we raise a lot of money.
MK:
Not just us. There's a lot of different restaurants and bakeries who provide the food. It's beautiful. There's silent auctions. Every bakery or restaurant will have four or five items on their table. And of course, everything is donated by the restaurant and bakeries.
SK:
There'll be close to six hundred people or more.
MK:
At Heartsville, and Scott Lecouric and his wife Barb are also like the top three who've been the longest running from the first fundraiser. And then Karrat's Restaurant, my family's restaurant, we were the first year participating also. And of course, we participated and so we closed. I feel very. I don't know, I just feel very humbled to be part of that event because his mom passed away about four or five years ago. They have the Siegenthaler Center and I think they only have four or five beds. She spent maybe only two days there but I tell ya…
SK:
But they took care of her.
MK:
They took care of us and her. It was amazing. Hospice is close to my heart because they came in and took care of my brother at home when he passed. They know us by name and we know them by name, the executive director and the people of the board of trustees. You know, we're not a big town but still, we try to donate a lot to all different school events. If it's not a gift certificate, it's a bucket of hummus with bread cut up. Nothing like that, we cannot write any of that off for some reason. I don't know why I forgot. It's all donated. Like Notre Dame just had their big, what do you call it? Notre Dame High school had their big fall, they have a new football field dedicated to Mr. Rizzo. We donated so much stuff and they sent us a letter they were so happy. But we did that a little extra because we know Mr. Rizzo. And now the football field will be named after him. So I mean, stuff like that. For church, we try to help out. We are parishioners of St. Louis Gonzaga church. It's been, over a hundred years?
SK:
Yeah.
MK:
The Lebanese community, the Maronite Catholics, has been here in Utica. The most recent house of the street is Rutger Street, the corner of Rutger and, uh,
SK:
Conklin.
MK:
Conklin, in Utica, New York. We try to help donate food or whatever. We have a big, big fundraiser in August. We make a lot of money for church and it's called the Taste of Lebanon. And now it's become very big. We, I, try to help out there, leave the business, close up at five and go over there and work the counters till nine there. We donate the bread for them. The ladies of the church make a lot of the food to help out. We have a lot of family and friends that do a lot for the church. That's about all we do for the community. And if people ask us, we're willing to, you know, Sculpture Space, you know the Munson-Williams [Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute]? We just did a big event there through the Folklore Society.
SK:
[Unclear]
MK:
The Folklore Society of Rochester. It was a beautiful event at the Munson-Williams, in Utica. That was amazing. People got to try our desserts and our coffee. It was more desserts. All different nationalities went there, from the Utica area. We've done many different things, like events like that. We used to do one at the Utica auditorium.
SK:
Festival of Nations it's called.
[TRACK 3, 16:40]
MK:
Yeah, at the time. We're proud of our Lebanese heritage. Of course, we're proud to be Americans, first and foremost. But the Lebanese people are very kind- and good-hearted people. Most of them are. We take pride in our culture. We wanted to keep the culture alive. And that's why we try to help out with different events. Everybody, they love our culture. A lot of our friends say, “We want to be Lebanese. Will you adopt us? Will you adopt me?” [laughs] It's been really fun. It's been a good ride so far, like I said. We hope to continue for a few more years, anyway. As long as we can do it.
MH:
Yeah, that's actually a great lead up to this question, what is the future of your bakery?
MK:
Well, like I say, we've expanded all we can do now because there's no more space to go anywhere. We feel very comfortable right now because if you get too big it's not good. For us, anyways. That's how we feel. We feel that we can handle this so that our future will be, we can succeed, continue to succeed. Because if we get any bigger or whatever, it's more bills and more headache. We just try to keep everything nice and clean and neat. Because once you get so big, you have more to do and more bills. So we feel if we stay the size we are now we can serve our customers for the future. We'll continue to do how we have done it. That's with pride and with good food and homemade and fresh and do our best to serve the community and our customers.
SK:
Yeah. She's doing good, isn't she? Yeah. [clears throat] Okay. What else?
MK:
[whispers] Shut it off
ED:
Is there anything else you guys would like to tell us?
SK:
No, we said a lot.
MK:
We just got inducted into the Oneida County Historical Hall of Fame 2019 Living Legends. We were so honored, I told the executive director, “We don't deserve this.” And he said, “You wouldn't be nominated if you didn't deserve it.” It's called the 2019 Richard W. Cooper Living Legends. We also got inducted with the past congressman Sherwood Boehlert, Donna Donovan, she was the [Utica] Observer-Dispatch president, Monk Rowe, who is a Hamilton College professor and musician, along with Ed Welsh, who is a legislator or something of that sort, and now he's the executive director of CABVI [Central Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired], for the blind. CABVI, I think they call it. We were just so honored to have been inducted. The night, the evening was really beautiful. We never expected it to be like that. The speeches and the slideshow that they showed were amazing and so informative. They also inducted the people who have passed. The legends that have passed. We each had to say a few words. We just felt that, we were so humbled to get this award. We felt that we didn't deserve it but we did, I guess. [laughs] We had to do a little speech. I spoke on behalf of Segean and I. I just said that we were very humbled because we started this business and we took a lot of chances and built this business up to what it is today and many of our customers and family were present. We had, like, forty people there at the event, even more than that, who came out for us. I thanked our customers and our family. I just said that our upbringing and our parent's upbringing, our hard work rubbed [off] on us both and we both enjoyed working together to build up the business. We were just thankful we had good customers. It was just a wonderful evening.
MH:
Well, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
MK:
You're so welcome. I hope this will be informative for your project. Thank you.
MH:
Absolutely.
SK:
Thanks.
[END TRACK 3, 24:22]

Coverage

Upstate New York

Yorkville, NY

-2019

Creator

Emma Dambek

Mary Horabik

Publisher

Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University of New York-College at Oneonta

Rights

Cooperstown Graduate Association, Cooperstown, NY

Format

audio/mpeg
27.5 mB

audio/mpeg
22.4 mB

image/jpeg
8.5 x 11 in.

Language

en-US

Type

Sound

Image

Identifier

19-006

Abstract

Track 1, 4:22 - Lebanon

Track 1, 6:52 - Lebanon

Track 1, 11:52 - Immigration

Track 1, 17:59 - Karam's Middle Eastern Bakery, operations

Track 1, 22:40 - Bakery, bread making

Track 2, 9:18 - Family

Track 2, 12:23 - Family

Track 2, 16:45 - Holiday Traditions

Track 2, 18:47 - Lebanese dishes, desserts

Track 2, 28:05 - War

Track 3, 19:41 - Oneida County Historical Hall of Fame

Item

Mary and Segean Karam, November 20, 2019