From a Refugee Camp in Turkey to a Beloved Food Cart on Vashon Island

Safa Jneidi and Iyad Alati at work

Iyad’s Syrian Grill, Vashon Island

Photos courtesy of Iyad’s Syrian Grill (syriangrill.com)

Safa Jneidi and Iyad Alati fled Aleppo, Syria, and spent four years in Turkey before being resettled to Vashon Island, Washington, with help from the island’s Resettlement Committee. They arrived with three children and little else.

In 2019, the couple opened Iyad’s Syrian Grill, a halal food cart serving the dishes of home — hummus, shawarma, falafel, baklava — at Vashon Villages and the Saturday farmers market. Islanders took to it quickly, and the business grew from a single cart into a presence on local grocery shelves at Vashon Thriftway and Market IGA, plus menus at area cafés.

In 2023, the U.S. Small Business Administration named Jneidi its Young Entrepreneur of the Year, honoring her at a ceremony at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

What started as a way to rebuild a life interrupted by war has become something the whole island now claims as its own — proof that a family who lost everything once can still build something worth celebrating.