The Halal Table is our weekend tour of halal food worth talking about. Good food, good people.
This weekend we are in Chicago's West Ridge, where a mother's persistence turned home cooking into one of Devon Avenue's most heartwarming new restaurants.
Toyuba Amir Ali learned to cook from her mother, worked in restaurant kitchens in Malaysia and once ran a food stall there with a friend. After moving to the US in 2024, she started cooking Malaysian comfort food for family and friends at home, and word spread the way good food always does. Soon she was feeding about 50 paying customers a week out of her own kitchen. She kept telling her family, "the restaurant is calling me." Her kids were skeptical, then supportive: three siblings and relatives pooled their savings, and in March, Asian Homecook opened its doors, a cozy 45-seat halal Malaysian restaurant on Devon Avenue, right across from the Rohingya Culture Center.
The menu reads like a tour of Malaysian street stalls, every bit of it halal. There is mee goreng mamak ayam, noodles tossed in a sweet and spicy sambal, and nasi goreng kampung, a fried rice with crispy anchovies topped with a fried egg. The roti section deserves its own pilgrimage: flaky roti canai, egg-filled roti telur, even a banana roti. Daily specials like pisang goreng, golden fried banana fritters, are the kind of thing you order for the table and quietly wish you had not agreed to share. A TikTok from Malaysian creator Hana Rafee praising the spot has pulled in nearly 150,000 views, and the dining room now fills with neighbors of every background, many trying Malaysian food for the very first time.
A family that bet on their mother's cooking, a community showing up for its newest neighbors, and a dining room where the whole city meets over roti. As her daughter Aishah puts it, seeing different people come together over their food makes it all worth it. Alhamdulillah indeed.
Find them: Asian Homecook on Devon Avenue in Chicago's West Ridge, and see the viral TikTok that introduced them to thousands.
Source: WBEZ Chicago
Got a halal spot we need to know about? Send us a food tip and we might feature it next weekend.
For the foodie in your family who deserves a little celebrating, a personalized gift with their name in Arabic makes the sweetest thank you. And if you missed it, meet another food hero in our Halal Table feature on Cousin's Burger.
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