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Habash Café, long a local institution, for sale after string of family losses
by Robb Fulcher
The Habash Café, a local institution for three decades, is on sale following the deaths last year of three family members and spleen surgery for Hanneh Habash, the cook and mother confessor known as "Mama" to generations of patrons from the South Bay and beyond.
The restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway in south Hermosa will remain open while for sale; the asking price of $449,500 includes the land on which it sits.
Mama Habash, 75, continues to recover from the successful surgery, and plans to enjoy a long-awaited retirement that was postponed when the family bought the restaurant in August 1969.
"She was supposed to retire back then, instead of working another 31 years," her daughter, Fatina Johnston, said with a smile. "That was her ministry. Being in the restaurant was her way of being of service to people. She cooked for them, and she heard their stories."
Mama Habash's husband and two of their four children passed away within five months of each other in 1999.
Her husband, family patriarch Naoum "Papa" Habash, died last June 16 at age 79.
On July 2 their son Nabil Habash died at age 52. He had battled cancer for 10 years and, after a bone marrow transplant from Johnston, his sister, lived his last eight months cancer-free only to be felled by a lung infection.
On Oct. 7 daughter Najwa Habash Basil died at age 48 of liver failure and cardiac arrest. Her mother and sister got word of Najwa's death inside the chapel at Little Company of Mary Hospital, where they had stopped to say a prayer before visiting her in her room.
"My cell phone rang and it was the restaurant, saying they got a call from the hospital," Fatina said. "We ran upstairs, and confirmed that she had died."
Najwa was survived by two daughters, Nicole, 19, and Michelle, 18.
The Habash family struggled to carry on.
"My mother's faith kept her going," Fatina said. "We go to the cemetery and visit all three of them. It's surreal."
Mama underwent surgery to remove her spleen at Little Company of Mary shortly before Christmas, and was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve. The surgery had been delayed while physicians tried other treatments.
"Because she previously had heart surgery, and she was a diabetic, and she had been experiencing such grief, they thought she was not a good candidate for surgery at first," Fatina said.
Mama has been recovering well, and weekly monitoring of her condition continues to show success.
The Habash family emigrated to the U.S. in 1956 from Jerusalem, where Papa had worked as a tour guide, an engineer for the United Nations, and a coffee and dairy merchant.
He worked as a machinist in Detroit before moving to Hermosa in 1961, and opening grocery markets in Hermosa, Manhattan Beach and Playa del Rey.
In the 1960s the family moved into a house on Fifth Street. Around the corner on PCH, Papa saw a coffee shop that was up for sale, and he turned it into the Habash Café.
The restaurant began serving American food, but customers soon began asking exclusively for the Arabic food prepared by Mama. The American food went by the wayside, and a long, successful tradition of Middle Eastern food began.
After 31 years in the kitchen and at the tables, Fatina wants her mother to take it easier.
"It's time," Fatina said. ER