Photos by Kamal Moon
Food artist Muna Riyad Sharma of Bay View (left), an event stylist and producer, named her business “Bint Jamila’s Table.” Bint Jamila is Arabic for “daughter of Jamila.” Her mother Jamila (right) is her inspiration, she said.
Friends Lilliann Paine and Monique Liston, both from Sherman Park, attended Bint Jamila’s Table’s Palestinian Stews Workshop Sunday at The Gallery in Milwaukee after Liston saw it posted on a friend’s Facebook page.
“I love cooking, especially traditional home cooking, and my whole livelihood is wrapped up in the justice and liberation movement,” Liston told a Wisconsin Muslim Journal reporter as aromas of sautéed onions and savory chicken stock filled a room with walls featuring Palestinian-themed artwork. “It looked like a really cool opportunity on a weekend with a lot of events happening in support of Palestine.”
Paine is looking for activities that bring her joy, she explained. “And cooking has been one of those. I thought this workshop looked interesting and is unique in the way it is supporting and centering Palestinians.”
Lilliann Paine (left) and Monique Liston (right), friends from Sherman Park, pose with Muna Riyad Sharma, owner of Bint Jamila’s Table, who organized Sunday’s Palestinian Stews Workshop.
Halfway through the workshop, the friends said they had learned new ways to use familiar spices. “I’m used to cinnamon being put on toast or in tea, not in a stew,” Paine said. “The layering of flavors, starting with a familiar tomato base and layering in other flavors is what is making this experience exciting so far.”
The sold-out workshop was the first in Bint Jamila’s Table’s For Palestine Cooking Workshop Series, led by a Palestinian mother-daughter team. Participants learned about, cooked and joined in a communal meal of traditional Palestinian dishes in three-hour workshops held at The Gallery, 2335 N. Murray Ave., Milwaukee, a Palestinian-owned art gallery and food hall.
The two other workshops in the series are The Art of Fermentation, Sunday, March 17, and Classic Palestinian Iftar, Sunday, April 7. All workshops will be held at The Gallery. Tickets are $45. For times and dates of future workshops, follow Bint Jamila’s Table on Instagram.
Olivia Keidl of Riverwest (left), who has cooked for fun and professionally since she was a college student, attends Palestine-themed events to find community and show support, she said. Also shown (left-right) Muna Sharma and her mother Jamila (center), Monique Liston and Lillian Paine, friends from Sherman Park, and Maya Falkenberg of Milwaukee’s southside (right). Falkenberg, an activist and founder of Milwaukee Mama’s for Liberation, said, “I would like to enjoy cooking more than I do, but I want to amplify the message that a free Palestine represents liberation for all.”
Event stylist and producer Muna Riyad Sharma of Bay View, owner of Bint Jamila’s Table, creates dynamic tablescapes and edible art, and provides end-to-end event planning, catering and consulting. She also offers affordable community-based events and services she intends to be accessible to all, she said in an interview last week with WMJ.
Next up will be Ramadan dinners customers can purchase and pick up for iftar dinners throughout the holy month, which begins next week. They will feature the cooking of a variety of Palestinian women. Menus and costs will be published Friday on Bint Jamila’s Table’s Instagram. Other community events, planned for the summer, will be announced in April.
Find more information about workshops, Ramadan dinners and other community events on Instagram @bintjamilastable.
Sharma talked with WMJ about Bint Jamila’s Table’s upcoming programs and services, and her inspiration and vision for her unique business.
Sharing Palestinian food and culture
Bint Jamila’s Table burst on the Milwaukee scene Jan. 20 with its tablescape Food as a Form of Resistance at the For Palestine! For humanity! Art Showcase, introducing this Milwaukee business to a capacity crowd at The Gallery.
The colorful, tasty display “explored the tastes, textures, smells and colors that reflect the spirit of Palestine,” Sharma wrote in its description. It aimed to “highlight the profound connection between cuisine and the resilience of the Palestinian people.”
Her tablescape, an edible work of art, featured traditional dishes and staple food items “that have linked Palestinians across generations, both in isolated geographic regions and the diaspora.” One of her favorite experiences is watching children interacting with her tablescapes. “They’re so happy when they realize it is okay to eat it!” she said.
“In the face of challenges like ethnic erasure and cultural appropriation, it becomes imperative to preserve, celebrate and acknowledge Palestinian dishes in their true origin,” Sharma wrote in her tablescape’s introduction. “No ‘rebranding’ can alter the authenticity ingrained in each recipe, each flavor narrating stories of generations of Palestinians—past, present and future.”
The art show presentation of her tablescape was quickly followed by the launch of a cooking workshop series that aims to give participants immersive experiences with Palestinian cuisine and culture. The workshops give participants an opportunity to learn about the rich history behind beloved Palestinian dishes while meeting others drawn to learn about Palestinian cooking and culture.
Participants are also introduced to the art of setting “a Bint Jamila-esque table.” They set out colorful cloth napkins, flowers and colorful ceramic dishes that complemented the bright, tasty foods, served family-style. All done, they sat together and celebrated their success over the tasty meal.
With Ramadan dinners to be announced this Friday, Bint Jamila’s Tables is attracting attention from Milwaukee’s greater community, as well as those with Palestinian, Arab or Muslim roots.
“Mama Jamjam” stood at the helm of a long table that created an assembly line for chopping, mixing and cooking, as “guests” in aprons and latex gloves followed her instructions to create her personal family recipes. Sharma and her husband, “a strong support of (her) work and happiness,” fetched rice and onions, and other ingredients.
Mama Jamjam looks on as Sage McCormick of Wauwatosa skims fat from the chicken broth. McCormirk, a graduate student in counseling at Mount Mary University, said she’s “more social justice oriented” in her adult life. From social media and her new Palestinian friend, she has learned there is much more to the current crisis in Gaza than she had thought.
Customized catering services
Bint Jamila is a food artist that provides “the end-to-end experience,” which sets it apart, Sharma said. “Some people specialize in creating the tablescape, some in event planning and others in preparing the food. It’s rare to find someone who does it all.”
Shelly and Clay Sabourin of Glendale “like to learn everything,” Shelly said. “And Shelly loves to cook,” Clay added. The couple volunteer with the International Visitor Leadership Program, hosting international guests at their home, including a guest last year from Gaza, who sparked their interest in Palestine and Palestinian food.
Bint Jamila’s Table specializes in small events of 30-70 people, Sharma said. “We help you plan your event from the beginning, starting with the experience you want your guests to have. I will help facilitate creating invitations to convey the emotion you want them to carry, developing the menu and creating the dishes. Down to choosing the tea you serve, I will plan every ingredient with you. I’ll help select and arrange flowers and set the table—we are part of every single part of the process.
“Unfortunately, this service can be more expensive and may not be accessible to everyone. You are literally getting an artistic experience,” she noted. So, she can do any part of the process as well—consulting, the tablescape, etc.
“We can help people figure out what they want to do and where to get the best deals,” she said.
The community-based events are a way to make their usually high-end services accessible, she said.
“We also want it to be a space for other people, not just my mom, to come and share their food and skills. For example, the Ramadan dinners will create opportunities for other Palestinian women’s cooking to be featured. In the summer, we’re planning to do a few farmer’s markets where we’ll sell Palestinian breakfast items. We’re planning a variety of things to share different parts of our culture and ourselves with Milwaukee.”
Her inspiration
Sharma established Bint Jamila’s Table in 2022 but as a concept, Bint Jamila’s Table “has been around for a really long time,” Sharma said. She planned her first big event at 13 when she organized a huge prom for her all-girls class in the West Bank to mark their promotion to 9th grade. It included music, decorations, awards—all the things that signified the moment.
“The Intifada was slowing down a little and we were looking for avenues to have celebrations and have a normal resemblance of life, or what we thought was normal life—the one we saw on TV,” she said.
At the University of Virginia and later at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, she organized events. “For every organization I was part of, I was responsible for event planning and outreach. I’ve always had a passion for bringing people together. I feel like it is one of the things I was meant to do on this earth. That connection can take many forms but my true passion is bringing people together through food.”
Later, Sharma and her cousin decided to throw a family reunion at her cousin’s home in Bay View. “It was absolutely incredible and amazing. We had 45 of our family members come in. We transformed her backyard, and as we were doing this, she said, ‘When you move here, you should start a company.’”
For Sharma, it has always been about expressing herself, she said. She experimented with photography but “it is multi-dimensional art,” particularly with food, where she finds she can communicate, she said.
Yet, the inspiration goes back even further, to her Palestinian roots, and especially her mother, as the name of her business “Bint Jamila’s Table” implies. “Bint Jamila means “the daughter of Jamila” in Arabic.
Julie Rowley of Washington Heights (left foreground) remembers her great grandmother coming to visit and making Irish stew, a dish she has since reminded her of home, family and community. Learning to create a stew from another’s heritage “connects me to them and expands my world,” she said. “Being able to support Palestinians and bring what I learn to my friend groups is important to me as well.”
“Let me explain,” Sharma said. “Both of my parents are fully Palestinian. My families have been there for centuries. I grew up in Al-Bireh, where my dad is from.”
She recalled a day when she was 8 years old, during the intifada. Israeli soldiers came to her home and locked the family in one room. “My mother was not having it. She said I have to feed my family. I went with her when she went out to cook for the family, which she did with a gun pointed at her head the whole time.”
Fast forward to 2016 when Facebook and Instagram and other social media were taking off, “I was thinking about what I wanted my (online) name to be,” Sharma said. “I decided I’d be Bint Jamila. I wanted everybody to know I am Jamila’s daughter. It’s an honor to be her daughter.”
When it came time to name her company, it proved to be a perfect fit. “Everything I know about cooking, my whole life around food, entertainment, bringing people together was shaped by my parents but specifically my mom. She is the inspiration, the person I go to in everything. I wanted my company to have her name in it and to have her essence be intertwined into the soul of everything I do.”
