Born and raised in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, Rahim Muhammad loved traveling the world with his mother, Shawn Muhammad. He enjoyed experiencing new places through their diverse cuisines and valued the connection that food sparked between people.

Now, the mother-son team hopes to breathe fresh life into their neighborhood’s restaurant scene with Mahari, their new restaurant featuring dishes inspired by different cultures they love.

“When you walk around Hyde Park, you see a lot of fast foods,” Shawn Muhammad said. “(We wanted) to reach out to the whole diaspora … Black, Caribbean … Hispanic — the whole realm of us.”

Throughout visits to different cities — like his mother’s hometown of Gonzales, Louisiana —  Rahim Muhammad took particular interest in different flavors and cooking techniques.

“The idea is to cater people through experience and food, food history,” Rahim Muhammad said. Through this shared experience, he said, he hopes to teach people “about themselves and each other.”

Shawn Muhammad said her son’s upbringing sparked his interest in connecting people through cuisine.

“He realized that bringing food, different flavors together … people would come together, and it puts you on a whole other vibration when you eat good foods,” said Shawn Muhammad.

Rahim Muhammad said that embodying Mahari’s tagline — “from the roots, through the roots” — has been a major focus for the restaurant. Handcrafted art covers the walls, plants occupy tables and ledges in every corner, and curtains made by Shawn Muhammad herself hang by the window.

Mahari’s food reflects this same level of detail. Chefs and bartenders arrive hours before the restaurant opens to perfect the dishes and drinks, hand-chopping vegetables and preparing herbs for the cocktails.

Mahari’s menu boasts items such as Haitian hot wings, stuffed plantains and Caribbean lamb burgers.

“I could tell that the menu has been curated at a very high level,” said Belynda Wesley, a first-time patron of Mahari. “You could tell it’s been touched by somebody who actually cares about what they present to their customers.”

Although the restaurant’s goal was to bring cuisine from the Black diaspora to Hyde Park, giving back to the community has been another focus, said Hanae Mauldin, Mahari’s director of operations.

“We love being able to be tied to our community but also be reflective of our community, so that they see great people doing great things that look like them as well,” Mauldin said.

Mahari was the employment and community space – particularly for women – that Shawn Muhammad had always wanted to provide Hyde Park with, she said.

“We talked about it for a while and then as …  we prayed about it, our dreams started to come true,” she said. “Mahari has extended beyond cooking and being a restaurant. It’s kind of like a safe space for us women … a safe sister space.”

Rahim Muhammad said they wanted to create a place that represented Hyde Park’s diversity and their own. “We wanted to … stick to what we know and create something unique, where we’re from and where we’ve been.”

To craft the menu, Rahim Muhammad did extensive research, finding similarities in agricultural and cooking techniques to fuse foods that complemented each other well.

As a further celebration of the diaspora’s cuisine, Mahari holds a “Passport” series on Saturdays. They “tour” a new country, experimenting with the food, music and drink of that region. Past events have spotlighted Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Gambia.

The restaurant has hosted notable figures, like American activist Jacqueline Jackson, among other artists, politicians and visitors worldwide.  The family said Mahari’s growing base of regular customers also reflects the diversity of Hyde Park’s locals and has become a community space.

“Mahari also came from the desire for people to really get away from the norm and be able to express themselves,” Shawn Muhammad said. “When you take people away from what they do every day and put them in a safe space, you really get to know that person.”

Mauldin said that Hyde Park’s investment in its community makes it one of Chicago’s best neighborhoods to open a business.

“The people of Hyde Park are tied to their community,” said Mauldin. “When it’s something new and something that they enjoy, they tell everyone that they know about it.”

Wesley said that she hoped Hyde Park would continue to invest in businesses like Mahari.

“As a Black woman, I wanted to start coming to more Black-owned restaurants, especially when they’re made specifically with us in mind,” she said. “It’s really rare to find something very specific like this; I think this is a gem.”

In the future, Shawn and Rahim Muhammad said, they hope to expand Mahari into other states and continue to connect people through its family atmosphere.

“The name ‘Mahari,’ it means a gift,” Shawn Muhammad said. “And we wanted to give a gift to Hyde Park.”