Local Market Blossoms from Smaller to Super

Once was a time (January 1999, to be exact) when the Southgate Village Shoppes, a small strip mall in Falls Church on East Fairfax St., was dubbed by The Washington Post as a “destination for all things Middle Eastern.”

Shortly thereafter, however, in January of 2000, the Falls Church Episcopal, Southgate’s neighbor across East Fairfax Street, purchased the shopping center and informed the seven tenants it would not renew their leases. All seven businesses there have since either closed their doors permanently or found a new home. The church’s plan is to demolish the center and build a new parish life center.

In the case of Mateen Chida, it turned out to be rather providential. He didn’t have to go far to find a bigger, better location for his Halal Meat Market.

In October of 2003, Chida relocated his business to 155 Hillwood Ave., in the Tower Square Shopping Center, just behind the Southgate Center, in the space formerly occupied by the Galaxy Restaurant.

The lease buyout by the Falls Church Episcopal worked out as a blessing for Chida’s business, now the Halalco Supermarket.

“We are in a bigger space now,” Chida said, “so we are able to offer our customers a lot more.”

With 12,000 sq. feet, Halalco has more than tripled the space it had at its former Southgate location and the amenities it has added for its costumers include a brand new, expansive produce section, an expanded, convenient self-service meat counter, and bookshelves lined with the one of the most extensive collections of Muslim-related literature this side of Riyadh. (Over 6,000 titles.)

“We are feeding the stomach, but the mind requires food too,” quipped Chida.

The term, Halal, is to Islam as Kosher is to Judaism. The difference is in the Muslim religion, every animal must be blessed before it is slaughtered.

Chida, who came to the US from Hyderabad, on India’s west coast and a primarily-Muslim area of the country, first lived in Minnesota as an engineering student. A devout Muslim, he admitted that as a student, time devoted to schoolwork and a near total lack of available Halal sources forced him to bend the rules a little.

But, to meet the demands of friends, acquaintances and himself, Chida started slaughtering animals himself in the proper, Halal tradition. Before long, he had rented a locker in a freezer to freeze the meat he slaughtered and shortly after, as demand steadily rose, he rented the entire freezer.

In March, 1977, after relocating to the Washington area, Chida bought the small space in the Southgate center. It was, at the time, the only Halal shop of its kind in the DC metro area. At that time, he would wake up very early to drive to a slaughtering house in Ocean City, Md. to slaughter the animals himself.

“I really had no previous experience in slaughtering animals, but I learned as I went,” said Chida.

Today, with many more employees and more Muslims in the area—hence a few more slaughterhouses—Chida doesn’t have to do as much of the hard work himself. Chicken, one of the more difficult to slaughter, used to require Chida to go four times a week to a slaughterhouse in Berlim, Md. at 2 a.m. “It was very hectic and very tedious,” he said. Now, much of the blessed meat comes from a massive slaughterhouse in Fredericksburg and chicken from major houses in New York and Pennsylvania.

Much of the meat is sold fresh the day it is slaughtered and Chida attracts customers from as far away as Richmond, Frederick, Md., West Virginia the Eastern Shore and parts of Pennsylvania.

Beyond meat, the new Halalco is a treasure trove of foreign breads, fruits, vegetables, pastries, and, most of all, spices.

“Cooking techniques are different between people from India and Iran,” Chida said. “I cannot just cater to one particular taste.”

For example, he notes, there are many Lebanese in the DC area that prefer a particular spice while Pakistanis have never heard of it.

Chida showed off his spice aisle that featured a one-pound container of tamarind, a spice found in almost all Indian cooking. The aisle stretches well beyond the tamarind to the osfor, golpar, jaljira and plenty more that the average American cook has never seen. Most notable are the sizes.

“In most American stores,” Chida says, “spices are sold by the half ounce. For American cooking, that spice may last a whole year. For many of my customers, maybe a week.”

Fruits like pomegranate and papaya are featured in the produce section and an entire aisle of various flatbreads, pita breads and nan breads.

A staple in Chida’s store has always been shortening. “Almost all shortenings in this country are made using animal stock so I have always had to have a special kind,” he said.

“I have always had a variety of Muslim and non-Muslim customers,” Chida says with a smile, stroking his massive beard. “Our cookies are very popular with everyone.”

The Qur’an states: “O ye who believe! Eat of the good things where with we have provided you, and render thanks to Allah if it is indeed He whom ye worship.” (2:172)

At times, when the meat is fresh, shoppers will line up 40-50 deep at the meat counter. But the bustling supermarket, open every day of the week, has blossomed into the paramount source for Halal meats but also one of Falls Church’s most flavorful food stores.

After over 35 years in a continually growing business, Chida is most boastful about Halalco’s expanded website, www.halalco.com. “We’re coming into the 21st century,” he exclaimed with a hearty laugh.