Bashir Chedrawee, co-owner of Simone’s Kitchen in Schenectady, prepares Shawarma chicken wings and a tzatziki-blue cheese dressing for Saturday’s Wing Walk.
SCHENECTADY — Bashir Chedrawee worked through his teen years at a family-owned Lebanese restaurant in Cohoes, but he didn’t see that as his future career path. Medicine, he thought, seemed more like where he was headed.
That led to him studying biochemistry and neurological science at the University at Albany, from which Chedrawee graduated in 2017. But life, of course, has a way of changing the best-laid plans.
Chedrawee was taking a gap year while applying to medical schools when his mother, Simone, asked him to help her start a new storefront restaurant in West Coxsackie, one that would focus on the kind of cooking she did at home.
The small Simone’s Kitchen's saw immediate success.
“Within a week there was a line out the door,” Chedrawee recalled. Soon, business was beyond what Simone Chedrawee wanted to handle, and she backed away from running it. But with the overnight popularity of Simone’s Kitchen, her son was drawn deeper into the mindset of a restaurateur.
“That’s when I realized the idea had a lot of appeal and I decided to withdraw my applications to medical school,” he said.
Soon, Bashir Chedrawee wanted to expand into the Capital Region, and in 2022 he and partners founded Simone’s Kitchen, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant at 121 Jay St. in Schenectady, at the northern end of the Jay Street pedestrian mall.
“We looked at a lot of locations in the Capital Region but ultimately chose Schenectady because it was up-and-coming,” Chedrawee said. “[The Schenectady location] became very successful very quickly.”
Baklava and other tempting treats are available near the register at Simone's Kitchen in Schenectady.
Stephen Williams
Chedrawee has two partners in the restaurant, college friend Shan Kaurejo and Julianna Trombley.
“This business is rooted in a mother’s love for feeding her children, and this is doing the same thing for the community,” Chedrawee said, in summing up his approach.
The restaurant, which still carries his mother’s name, offers bowls and plates of eclectic fare from around the Mediterranean, from chicken shawarma to falafel to fresh-ingredient salads. It also offers small plates called mezza that might feature hummus and flavorings such as garlic, za’atar and tahini. Chedrawee noted that for many dishes the level of spice is toned down to suit upstate palates.
In barely 18 months in business, Simone’s Kitchen has won the past two Schenectady Soup Strolls and garnered other awards.
Describing the food, Chedrawee noted that many national or ethnic traditions have blended over the centuries.
“There are 22 countries around the Mediterranean,” he said. With olive oil and lemons in common, “they all traded back and forth and exchanged influences. Its simple ingredients combined in interesting ways.”
Chedrawee has an interesting backstory in his own right.
Bashir Chedrawee outside Simone’s Kitchen in January 2024.
Stephen Williams
While his parents were of Lebanese descent, he was born 31 years ago in the African nation of Ghana where his expatriate father ran a sawmill. The family came to the United States when Bashir was 8 and eventually settled in the Capital Region, where they founded Albaraki, a Lebanese restaurant that operated in Troy and later Cohoes. It closed in 2012.
That’s where Bashir worked as a teen.
“Even though I wasn’t involved in the core of the business, I got a good sense of the business,” he said.
Returning to Schenectady and the current operation: Simone’s Kitchen has roughly 50 customer seats and 20 employees. Chedrawee said the business volume is about 60% dine-in and 40% takeout. The restaurant uses a service-line model in which customers order at one end of a long counter, then walk past stations where they can watch as their meal is prepared until reaching the cash register — where an inviting selection of cakes, baklavas and other sweet treats await them.
“We have people coming from Saratoga, from Albany, from Troy,” Chedrawee said. “The space is a very relaxing, modern space. We provide a luxury experience that everyone can afford.”
Simone’s Kitchen is generous to its employees by industry standards, guaranteeing them as least $16.50 per hour with tips, free and discounted food, a gym membership, telemedicine access and retirement contributions for employees who work more than 23 hours per week.
“We put our people first, put our space first, put our customers first and then make money,” Chedrawee said in a previous Daily Gazette interview.
Beyond the doors of Simone’s Kitchen, Chedrawee has shown an entrepreneurial spirit, branching out to other food services and getting involved in plans for other businesses on Jay Street.
The Coxsackie Simone’s Kitchen, which closed for renovation during the COVID pandemic, is expected to reopen this spring, creating another 20 jobs in that small Greene County community, Chedrawee said.
Bashir Chedrawee, co-owner of Simone’s Kitchen in Schenectady, prepares Shawarma chicken wings and a tzatziki-blue cheese dressing for Saturday’s Wing Walk.
By Indiana Nash
And Simone’s Kitchen has begun to provide the food service at a bar and music venue a few doors down on Jay Street.
Chedrawee is also seeking financing for a couple of other ideas that could bring new businesses to the Jay Street mall, though they could be months from fruition.
The space at 133 Jay St. previously occupied by the Dilly Bean would become Connie’s Confectionary, which would be a place where people who like to bake but don’t want to run a business could sell sweet goods on a consignment basis.
“It’s going to be an across-the-board dessert shop,” Chedrawee said. “It could be an incubator for small bakers.”
He would also like to take over the Jay Street Collective site and call it Connie’s Creative Market. It would offer a similar business model, still functioning primarily as a place where artists and artisans could sell their creative products by consignment.
There is no “Connie” for whom the enterprises are named — Chedrawee said it's simply an appealing-sounding name.
Overall, Chedrawee is enthused about doing business in downtown Schenectady.
“It has all the ingredients of what I think should be a thriving, vibrant area, especially downtown. It’s really fueled by the arts, cultural and entertainment scene. There’s great energy here.”
Simone Chedrawee, while no longer involved in her son’s restaurants, hasn’t disappeared: She is overseeing the preparation of about 300 senior citizen meals per week under a contract with the Schenectady County Office for the Aging. The Chedrawees are providing the meals to senior meal sites at the Ten Eyck Apartments in Schenectady and at a congregate senior meals site in Duanesburg.
Those meals are conventional American fare rather that Middle Eastern, but Bashir Chedrawee said they do try to use more fresh and healthy ingredients than what such meals often contain.
