From Syria to Lebanon to Glasgow, the story behind Damasquino in the Saltmarket

Damasquino brings Syrian and Lebanese food to Glasgow, building a palette for the cultures during their seven years in business.

Transcript

00:00We started when we came to this country, we came to this country about 10 years ago

00:06with my family of course and we used to own restaurants in Syria but after the war

00:15happened in Syria then we went to Lebanon, then we left Lebanon, we came to the UK and Scotland.

00:21We got an ambition you know to open a restaurant right here in Glasgow, we saw how good the people

00:31are, how nice is the country and we wanted to show the Scottish people our food and how we can

00:39serve that food to this community. We started this restaurant and we had a lot of hope to make it

00:48successful and we had a lot of hard work, we put a lot of hard work in this restaurant

00:58to make it happen. Then after six, seven years we had a very very successful restaurant in the

01:07salt market and as you know all the people they talk about how good is the food, how good is the

01:14service, all that came from the hard work. To be honest it wasn't that easy just to serve that food

01:21in Glasgow because it was a very very new cuisine to the Glaswegian people. Seven years ago, eight

01:29years ago the people of Glasgow they used to only for the Indian, Chinese and Pakistani food

01:36but the Lebanese food was very very new right here in Scotland and Glasgow.

01:43You know they liked it a lot, they liked the spices, they liked how we serve it, gave a lot of

01:48attention you know to the Glaswegian people. They loved it, they loved it a lot and they were

01:55very very welcoming to this kind of food and I'm so happy, I'm so happy. To be honest salt market

02:03means to me very very much because the salt market wasn't used to be like this. Seven years ago

02:13most of the shops were closed and it was quite you know it's quite not that popular for

02:21for the businessmen to come and invest right here in this street while it's a historical street and

02:28you know everyone knows salt market high street. We knew that this street will be

02:36something and we could create something in this street, something very very successful

02:43but I never doubt, I never doubt that success that we could we could do right here.

02:49We had quite hard times because not a lot of people used to come to that street at that time

02:56seven years ago but after this, after the success of Damaskino many people, many people they start

03:05looking to invest near that street or even in that street because they knew that Damaskino

03:11have done something right here and we could do something as well right here.