Anne's Toum

Anne's Toum began on a tennis court in the 70's, where Anne met Maroun Berberi who had recently escaped the civil war ravaging his home city of Beirut, Lebanon. Fast forward a few years and Anne and Maroun married. Anne loved cooking, and Maroun missed the food of his homeland, so Anne learned to cook all of Maroun's favorite Lebanese foods, most importantly toum! Maroun's mother taught Anne how to make their family-recipe toum on her first visit. Maroun and Anne eventually had two children, Matt and Katia. And when Katia was 4 years old, she began learning how to make toum with Anne too. The blend of cultures enabled Anne and Katia to branch outside the original toum box in terms of application (garlic bread for Thanksgiving!), and flavor, when they began adding spices into the toum; spices that you would find daily in Lebanon, but not necessarily in the toum itself. And their toum became a hit! Strong enough to lend an honestly clean garlic flavor to your favorite foods, but tame enough to enjoy on a daily basis. Sadly, Anne passed away unexpectedly in 2019. So to honor Anne, and Katia's Lebanese heritage, we quit our jobs and started Anne's Toum as a way to share Katia's mom's, and her teta's (grandmother) spirit with the world through their family-recipe toum. Since we started Anne's Toum in 2020, It's been a roller coaster of sadness and joy for Katia. But, sharing her toum with the world has helped Katia feel close with her Mom and her Teta on a daily basis. And that for us, is what food is all about.