"We have a lot of Arabic customers, but we like to have all different kinds of customers," said Vahid Daneshvar, co-owner of the Meridian Market.

From dried limes, lavash, and halal meats on the shelves, to mortadella, khoresht ghormeshsabzi and a variety of kabobs at the deli, the market is stocked with ingredients that are used in Middle Eastern home cooking but are hard to find in the large chain supermarkets.

While most of their products are Persian or Arabic, Daneshvar says they carry some European, Greek, Russian and American products, too.

Daneshvar and his brother-in-law, Hazem Shaban, opened the store in the Princeton Plaza at Kooser and Meridian five months ago. It is their second store—the other, opened about four years ago and located at Snell and Blossom Hill—does not serve prepared foods.

Catering mainly to the Arabic community in their grocery business, Daneshvar said while they see a variety of ethnicities coming in for lunch or take-home dinners, most of the deli customers are American and have heard about their food through word of mouth.

"I'm tired of my cooking, so I'm getting some food to go," said Kris Saba. "The food here is really good."

Saba, who is not Arabic, said she shops at stores such as Meridian Market to find specific spices and herbs she uses to make typical Arabic dishes for her Palestinian husband.

Holding a can of her preferred brand of Persian fava beans, she points to some tahini on a nearby shelf and describes how she mixes the two together, along with some other ingredients, to create one of her favorite recipes called "foul" (pronounced like "fool").

While Saba waits for a cup of Turkish coffee, another woman is bent over a recently delivered box of Persian eggplants—Shaban says they get produce deliveries three times each week—carefully inspecting each one of the dozen or more she is putting in her produce bag. The Persian variety of the purple staple of many Arabic dishes is smaller than the typical American variety.

The apples and tangerines, about the size of golf balls, are sweeter than the American variety, he said. The Persian cucumbers are smaller too, crunchier and oftentimes eaten as a fruit.

Unlike the other fruits, pomegranates—another popular fruit in Daneshvar's culture, he says—are larger than what is found in supermarkets and can also be found at the store in a paste, syrup or juice.

Piled high on a shelf near the entrance are stacks of tamarind—thick, dark, molasses-looking loaves.

"Back home, teens and kids love to eat it," Daneshvar says. "It is sour and soft. It melts in your mouth."

Daneshvar and Shaban said they both do a little cooking—Daneshvar has a background in food and beverage management and worked as a general manager and regional manager for Denny's and Bakers Square—but mainly the food is prepared by their two cooks, Mona Haghighi and Nazih Saman. It is all prepared halal, which means it is in agreement with Muslim laws and does not include any blood or blood by-products, alcohol or intoxicants, or pork or pork by-products, and any animal products used have been properly slaughtered.

Their most popular menu items are the kabobs, which most often Daneshvar says will be accompanied by a yogurt drink, sold at the store in noncarbonated and carbonated styles in original or mint flavors.

They sell some standard American fare, including Coca-Cola and French fries, but absent the ethnic flavor found in the market, those items don't sell nearly as well as the other items, he said.

A wide variety of breads, some of which is made right there at the store, is stacked in the large window along the plaza's walkway. Fred Soloman, a regular customer of the market, piled his hand-held basket with 10 loaves of pita bread. Soloman says he shops at the market about once a week for everything from teas to sugar to fruit—or, he says, whatever his wife sends him for—and an occasional meal. He stops to introduce Shaban to his brother, who is visiting from Sweden.

It is the kind of introduction that Shaban and Daneshvar are accustomed to and encourage. They know many of their customers by name and want them to feel at home when they walk in the door.

It is why, Shaban said, they plan to alternate working between their two stores.

"We want people to get to know us and recognize our faces," Shaban says. "We want our customers to feel comfortable."