With her company Karam, Alia Amer hosts cooking classes to show off Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian recipes for Hong Kongers to savour.
When Alia Amer and her husband arrived in Hong Kong in 2000, immigration authorities told her that they were one of the first Palestinian-Jordanians to have ever passed through the city borders. Today, they are the only Jordanians currently living here.
The couple moved to the city for work in the logistics industry, leaving Jordan for the first time in their life.
Later moving to China in 2009, Alia faced reality that the Levantian flavours she grew up with would be near impossible to find east of her homeland. “I wanted to cook for my children and connect them to their culture,” Alia tells Foodie. “Food in Arabic culture is a way of expressing love.”
Middle Eastern spices, if they could be found on the mainland, were prohibitively expensive to purchase. In 2014, upon a return to Hong Kong, she rediscovered the spices she could not access before, and made the recipes she was aching for in China.
Friends, family, friends of friends, her children, and chefs began tasting her Middle Eastern food at dinner parties she hosted. “They all said you have to do something with your cooking.”
Soon after Karam was born in late 2020, her space to bring Middle Eastern cuisine to Hong Kong, centered within her Palestinian-Jordanian roots. Named after her late mother, a source of inspiration to launch a project like this, Alia began hosting cooking classes teaching how to make her family recipes.
At a Kennedy Town-based private kitchen, Alia invites groups to learn how to make one mezze, one main, and a dessert. Her mezze selection includes babaganoush, zaatar halloumi pie, tabouleh, and hummus with pine nuts.
With mains, attendees have a choice of shishtawouk grilled chicken skewers, pistachio lamb kebab, beef shawarma, falafel, and more. Desserts include baklava rolls, dates cake, and um ali bread pudding. “We all learn and dine together,” she says.
Where flavours and recipes have roots in a large swath of the Levant area, with minor tweaks applied, Alia serves what is most representative of the Middle East itself. “My mother has Syrian heritage with our family having roots in Palestine, so I have learned a lot [in my cooking] from her.”
Her cooking classes also incorporate vegetarian dishes, a strength of the spices used to power the recipes, but she “doesn’t believe in fusion, especially in the Middle East. It has too lovely ingredients to mix around.”
“I was and still am surprised that Middle Eastern food is accepted by Hong Kong.” She recounts that the history, culture, or cuisine of Jordan is largely unknown in Hong Kong. “Most people think I was born in Kowloon when I tell them I come from Jordan!”
As Alia’s cooking classes grew since 2021, she has expanded her business to incorporate new elements. Her catering arm prepares Middle Eastern desserts and mezze platters for events, with her Dubai chocolate creations a dish that brought her local fame.
Alia markets her business to people who do not have much knowledge in the Middle East in order to ingratiate them with a region that deserves culinary attention.
Whilst the attention in Hong Kong has been placed on growing business ties with the Gulf Countries, Alia wants Hong Kong’s focus on culture and cuisine in the north and centre of the region.
Book Alia for her Middle Eastern cooking class to learn the recipes of her homeland.
