Life In The West Ward: Daddy's Place, Mommy's Kitchen

Sharbel Koorie opened up Daddy's Place, Mommy's Kitchen on Northampton Street in the West Ward one year ago. Originally set to be a sandwich place with limited hours, they have grown into a full-menu Mediterranean and American restaurant.

Me: "Why choose the West Ward to run your restaurant?"
Him: "Well, I'm born and raised in Easton and we live in the West Ward, so we've been here 47 years where I live, and I find there's a lot of family, a lot of community in there. We've just been big fans of the City as a whole, and my wife has always liked to cook and we just thought it was a good, adventurous event, something new to try. You know, we didn't think we'd have such a huge response. My uncle, who's a chef, told me one time, 'If you're gonna do something, if you have the passion for it, it'll show in your product.' We've been so blessed to have so many nice people; we've met so many people in this past year and we're just looking forward to continue it. But the West Ward in general has a lot of families, different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. We're in a really dense area on that part of the street, and it's all walks of life. You see the news sometimes and people get a little shaken up, but really if you look at what creates and makes the West Ward, it's families. Whether you're on the top of the income scale or the bottom of the income scale, everybody's worried about their children coming home safely, did the children eat, did the children look good when they go to school... It's all the same values. With the name of the restaurant, 'Daddy's Place, Mommy's Kitchen,' it represents the family. Where we live, we're seven boys and five of us still live on the same block around my mom and dad, so in our neighborhood, all our children play and all the people around us, we know their children, so it really is like the old neighborhood."  

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