Lebanese Culture

Beginning in the late 19th century, Lebanese immigrants began settling in the United States, fleeing their Levant homelands because of an increasingly oppressive political and religious environment, as well as to seek economic opportunities. Officially, these immigrants were leaving the Syrian province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, as the designation “Lebanese” would not become universally accepted until after World War I.

Lebanese immigrants settled throughout south Louisiana, from New Orleans to Lake Charles, with approximately 80 families putting roots down in Lafayette during this period. They likely came to Louisiana because of cultural affinities, including a shared Francophone language and Catholic faith.

One of the most notable individuals from this first generation was Racheed Sallum-el-Kik, who arrived at Ellis Island in 1892. Taking the last name Saloom, he set out for Louisiana, walking, so the story goes, the 1,500 miles over three months. Settling in Lafayette, he worked as a peddler, like many Lebanese immigrants of this period, selling wares door-to-door, trawling the outlying parishes with a horse and cart for customers. In 1909, he opened Saloom’s Store in downtown Lafayette on St. John’s Street.

Racheed Saloom’s successes encouraged and allowed family members to relocate to Lafayette. His nephew Kaliste Saloom Sr. arrived in 1897; Kaliste Saloom Road would be named for his son, a long-standing judge for the City Court of Lafayette.

Kaliste Saloom’s brother-in-law Alfred Boustany established Boustany’s Department Store and Supermarket, just up St. John Street, in 1920. That same year, his younger brothers Frem and Francis Boustany came over from Lebanon to help run the businesses. Frem went on to purchase the Huval Baking Company, makers of Evangeline Maid Bread and later Bunny Bread, introducing Lafayette’s iconic, three-dimensional rotating bread loaf billboard in 1960.

Another future department store entrepreneur, George Abdalla, arrived in Louisiana from Lebanon in 1895. He worked as a peddler in St. Landry Parish before opening his first business, the George Abdalla Bargain Store, in Opelousas at the turn of the century. This would be the first in the growing Abdalla’s retail empire. He expanded throughout Acadiana, launching department stores in Lafayette (1932) and New Iberia (1936). There was an Abdalla’s appliance store, a “fashion mart,” and, from 1967 to 2005, the beloved flagship Abdalla’s in Lafayette’s Oil Center. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Abdalla family sponsored Lafayette’s downtown Christmas parade. The last Abdalla family-owned store, Brother’s on the Boulevard, closed in 2019.

Acadiana’s Lebanese community often gather for family feasts, serving food from the old country mixed with just a touch of local spice, to form a cuisine some call LebaCajun. The main dishes are kibbe/kibbi (the national dish of Lebanon, made with bulgur wheat and ground beef, lamb, or fish), hashweh (a stuffing of chopped meat, onions, and pine nuts), tabouli (a salad of chopped vegetables and herbs mixed with bulgur), fattoush (a salad of mixed greens, vegetables, and torn pieces of fried pita bread), rice-and-meat stuffed grape leaves, and, of course, hummus.