HERE IS NOTHING Lena Sareini loves
more than a clean plate. “A lot of times
when people go out for dessert, it’s
just an indulgence,” she says. Some
might take just one or two bites before being over-
whelmed. “I want to see empty plates come back.”
To do this, Sareini, the pastry chef at Detroit’s Selden
Standard, works unexpected savory elements into
each of her recipes. She houses a honey-lavender
tart in a foundation built from a gently salty kalamata
olive dough. She dresses thick slices of brown-butter
banana bread with pleasantly bitter scoops of chicory
root ice cream and grains of puffed barley.
These ingredients are often pulled from Sareini’s
Lebanese American heritage, something she displays
proudly by wearing a hijab in the kitchen and mak-
ing dishes like kanafeh and baklava a regular part of
the kitchen lexicon. But when she first landed her
job at Selden Standard at age 22, she shied away from
drawing on her identity for inspiration. “I didn’t
want to be predictable, like, ‘Oh, the Lebanese girl
is going to make Lebanese dessert.’”
Since then (Sareini is now 27), she has reversed
that opinion. “As the years go by, I’m like, ‘If anyone’s
going to do it, it should be me,’” she says. On a recent
menu she topped tender slices of olive oil cake with
a thick layer of punchy za’atar. Another night, diners
were treated to plates of chocolate-coated halvah, a
sweet, tahini-based fudge, with scoops of earthy,
creamy sesame ice cream.
While traditional Arab desserts have long been
popular in her hometown of Detroit (the city’s
suburb of Dearborn has the largest proportion of
Arab Americans in the country), Sareini’s elevated,
boldly reimagined versions are something new. Her
influences include her food-obsessed family: Her
mother is a food photographer, and her father runs
one of the most popular food Instagram accounts
in Detroit. Even as a child, being in the kitchen was
her happy place; she skipped college to go straight
to culinary school.
Sareini hopes that her success working in a pro-
fessional kitchen, paying homage to her heritage,
is just the beginning, and that it will help inspire
a generation of Arab Americans to embrace a culi-
nary career path. “In the past few years, I have been
taking a lot of pride in my roots, and I feel like it’s
made me happier,” she says. “I’ve grown as a chef
because of that.”LENA
sareiniselden standard, detroitTi hope that kitchens
can become a
more supportive
environment. there
needs to be a focus on
employee health, teaching
employees, and giving people
an opportunity to progress
in their careers more easily.”
—lena sareini90 c hefsnewbestPHOTOGRAPHY BY CATHERINE SAREINI