December 31, 2017

The Weekly Bite: East Side Pockets in Providence

Local Stories

RestaurantInterviews

Today we’d like to introduce you to Providence’s East Side Pockets.

How did you end up in the restaurant business?
At nineteen, Paul Boutros moved to the United States from his home country of Syria hoping to build something successful enough to support his future children. So he turned to the family business, falafel.
Almost twenty years after opening East Side Pockets on Thayer Street in Providence, Boutros’s fast-casual Middle Eastern restaurant still regularly has lines out the door and is beloved by Yelpers, Brown students and Patriots players alike (Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman have been spotted here). The secret, he says, is the food’s simplicity and freshness — as well as the many family members who have worked alongside him for years.
Boutros sticks to the same basic recipe he learned while helping out at his father’s falafel stand in the northeastern city of Al-Hassake. “It’s only chickpeas — we soak and grind them fresh daily — and some seasonings like garlic, cumin and salt,” says Boutros. He forms his falafel with a hole in the middle, creating something similar to a doughnut shape. That way, the oil touches more surface area to ensure they are crispy, not oily. In addition to falafel wraps with hummus, tahini and vegetables, the restaurant serves chicken kabobs in wraps and salads, Middle Eastern platters and gyros.
Boutros assembles wraps alongside his brother, two sisters and their husbands, all of whom work at East Side Pockets. When he first opened the restaurant at the age of twenty-two in 1997, his mother and father also helped out by taking orders, prepping food and wiping off tables. “Back then, we did some really long days,” Boutros says. “My mom and sisters did twelve hours a day and the men did seventeen.”
No surprise, tensions sometimes ran high and there were arguments. “We step on each other’s toes sometimes,” he says. “If you work with a stranger, you cannot explode on them. They’ll just leave.”
Thankfully, all of the family members have since been able to scale back their hours to something more manageable. But the business is rarely out of Boutros’s thoughts entirely. “When I see a bad review online, I don’t sleep at night,” he says. And with help from a camera-viewing app on his smartphone, he can see how busy the restaurant is and make sure the tables look clean from home.
Even with that, he always schedules a family member to be on duty alongside some of the non-relatives he employs. “When I’m not here, I know somebody very trustworthy is watching my back,” he says. “Other employees, no matter how much you pay, it comes to the point that they don’t care as much because it’s not their business.”
Boutros’s three children, ages fifteen, twelve and three, are too young to be involved with the family business. But one day recently when his oldest son, Alexi, wanted a pair of expensive sneakers, he brought him into the restaurant for a lesson about hard work. When the lunch rush line started to snake out the door, Boutros asked his son to help out at the eatery and, to the teen’s surprise, one man tipped him for his service. That day, almost two decades after his father set up shop on Thayer Street, Alexi learned what it takes to earn a dollar and a repeat customer

We’d love to learn more about the struggles you’ve had along the way.
Language barrier

Tell us something interesting or unique about East Side Pockets.
Falafel wrap is the best around.