Reem Assil and Reem’s California
Reem Assil has grown her eponymous bakery from humble pop-ups and farmer’s market stands to a vibrant brick-and-mortar institution in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood.
Assil created Reem’s California out of a love for community and a celebration of her Arabic heritage. In addition to serving up delicious, pillowy man’oushe (a type of flatbread) and other Arabic baked goods, Assil has used her bakery as a platform to promote humanity and equality for all.
Beyond earning a devoted Bay Area following, Reem’s California has also garnered national acclaim. Named a 2017 Rising Star Chef by The San Francisco Chronicle, Assil’s bakery was proclaimed one of the best new restaurants in America by Food and Wine magazine in 2018 and earned Assil a nod as a James Beard Award semi-finalist in 2019.
But what do these accolades mean when facing a global pandemic?
As with so many other Bay Area restaurants and small businesses, the impact of COVID-19 on Assil’s business has been swift and merciless. Over only a few days, Assil went from celebrating the opening of her bakery’s second outpost, located in San Francisco’s Mission District, to making the gut-wrenching decision to shutter her Fruitvale flagship and lay off dozens of employees. As Assil recently told The New Yorker, “The news of the Coronavirus came so fast that it didn’t allow us to really plan for crisis management.”
COVID-19 may have uprooted her business, but it has also brought Assil closer to her roots.
Food and humanitarianism are intertwined for Assil, who worked as a local community organizer focusing on affordable housing projects and workers’ rights in the Bay Area before becoming a baker. This fits well into Assil’s partnership with SF New Deal, which has helped her transition the Fruitvale bakery into a commissary kitchen preparing 800 to 1,000 meals per week to feed first responders. For Assil, SF New Deal has been a lifeline, helping to make ends meet and keep people employed.
“It’s been an overall humbling experience for myself and my staff,” says Assil on needing to adjust her business under COVID-19. “Just the fact that we can take resources into our hands, reallocate the resources, and serve food to those who are the most food insecure.”
Assil has never shied away from voicing concerns over the inequities facing the restaurant industry. If anything, the pandemic seems to have strengthened the chef’s desire to upend the traditional restaurant business model. She is now reimagining how the bakery will evolve, possibly even shifting the business to become a worker-owned coop.
Whatever shape the business eventually takes, Assil hopes that SF New Deal’s community-driven approach can be more than just short-term effort and that it will inspire others.
“Hopefully some iteration of this will stay, because we're going to need a longer-term recovery. I have faith that if SF New Deal is replicated, we could create new systems.”
Want to support Reem’s California? Consider purchasing a meal kit on their website, or donating to their Oven Repair Fundraiser.
Words by Sarah Fritsche
Photos by Molly DeCoudreaux
