It’s perhaps not surprising that a place called the Roma Bakery bills itself as “home of the pepperoni roll” and has a glass case full of cannoli, cheesecake, and the tiny cookies that Italians love so much with their espresso. But less predictably, the Roma Bakery’s outdoor sign is also printed in Arabic. On any given day, Roma is full of women in hijab, standing around waiting for their baked-to-order manoushi and za’atar to come out of the oven. And that’s just the beginning of the cheerful ethnic scramble at Roma.
Owner Sam Nemer is Lebanese, though he has never lived there. Born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to immigrant Lebanese textile merchants, he’s fluent in Arabic, Spanish, English, and Sierra Leone’s Krio (a mix of English and tribal languages). About a dozen years ago, he bought the Roma Bakery, which had operated since 1949 in Dearborn. “When we acquired it, we kept the name because it was a legend. We changed the format a little because the population had changed. It used to be an Italian neighborhood, but the Italians had moved to Windsor, St. Clair Shores, Novi, Ann Arbor.”
Nemer, fifty-six, came to the U.S. when he was eighteen and spent the first half of his career working for PepsiCo in Florida and North Carolina. He learned the bakery business on the job, keeping the pizza rolls and adding Middle Eastern specialties the neighborhood demanded. Recently he completed an associate’s degree in baking at Arts International in Novi.
Strolling over to the pastry case, he shows off what he learned there: “I make all my own shells for the cannolis, eclairs, and mini puffs. I make two different fillings for my cannolis–Bavarian cream and chocolate chip butter cream.” He also makes cheesecakes, pies, cookies, Turkish delights–“Butter and semolina, and a little bit of sweetness. I put walnuts in them.”–and the slightly sweet Iraqi bread/cookies he calls “buxoms.” Moving over to the savory side of the bakery, today he has pizza rolls stuffed with pepperoni and sausage, bite-sized spinach pies, meat squares, and larger broccoli and cheese pies on display. He points to a tray of samosas. They’re larger and flatter than the customary fist-sized pouches. “Actually, they’re Yemeni samosas,” he explains. “A Yemeni customer described to us how to make them. We created this recipe, and we liked it.”
He interrupts the interview to wait on a Syrian woman. Her English is flawless, but it is her first time in the shop, and she is an exacting customer; English isn’t the right language for the questions she has. A lengthy, technical interrogation in Arabic ensues. Nemer quickly assembles her order and throws it under the roaring jets of the “hearth oven,” as he calls it, standard equipment in Middle Eastern bakeries and restaurants. A few minutes later, she leaves with ten 9″ pies, called manoushi, –six cheese and four topped with za’atar (a mix of thyme and other spices)–and a dozen and a half mini-pies filled with meat, spinach, or feta, all baked to order.
But how did she know that she could request that her manoushi or za’atar be baked while she waited? Nemer was startled by that question; it revealed a cultural divide. Take note, Anglos: that’s what the hearth oven is for, and that’s why there are no thyme or cheese pies on display. The powerful hearth oven, which can cook a sixteen-inch pizza in three or four minutes, is used as needed. When everyone is tuned in to the on-demand system, there’s little waste at the end of the day (any leftovers are donated to a group of needy families in Dearborn).
Nemer’s Roma Bakery in Dearborn continues to operate. His wife and nephew are running it. The Ann Arbor location, on Washtenaw west of Golfside, opened in mid-October, and he’s welcoming new customers and new ethnicities every day, tailoring the market to what Ann Arbor and Ypsi like.
Roma Bakery, 4837 Washtenaw. 879-0100. Mon.-Sat. 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m.-3 p.m.