Our Story

Damoori Kitchen was started with a simple premise about Lebanese food: that nothing's better than the food cooked by teta (grandma).

Executive Chef and co-owner Andrea Matni-Ryan was raised in North Seattle to Lebanese parents and grew up in Seattle's Lebanese community. Her summers were spent visiting family in Lebanon or hosting Lebanese relatives visiting Seattle. Whether at home in Western Washington or back in the "old country", huge communal meals of home-cooked Lebanese food were a fixture: dishes like saniyet kibbeh, ruz wi djaj, fattoush, freshly-made hummus or baba.

Andrea met husband and co-owner Conor Ryan at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and Conor was hooked the first time he tried saniyet kibbeh smothered in taratour sauce. Together, they kept returning to the question — why wasn't it easier to find food like this? It was healthy and delicious, but also simple. Not many ingredients, and mostly unprocessed ones. Sure, there was plenty of generic Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food available. But what about about the food that teta makes?

Named after Andrea’s father's hometown of Damour, Lebanon, Andrea and Conor opened Damoori Kitchen in 2017 with the sole purpose of sharing homestyle Lebanese cuisine. The dishes are created from Andrea's family's recipes passed down through generations and crafted with fresh, authentic ingredients. They are driven by that authenticity because, at its heart, Lebanese food is more than a delicious meal, it’s about bringing people together.