Karam Lebanese Deli and Catering

Our History

Our history can be traced back to 1986, when a young and enthusiastic Tony Karam brought his family to the United States from his native country of Lebanon.  Being an entrepreneur, and dreaming of something new, he left behind several businesses inherited from his beloved late father.  Once in the United States, he explored various opportunities here in Portland, where he finally settled into the restaurant business.

For the past 25 years, Mr. Karam established and operated several Lebanese restaurants in the Portland area, with his wife Emelin, working beside him. Together, they introduced authentic Lebanese cuisine to countless patrons through their innovative and mouth-watering menu items. Their restaurant was rated “Best Lebanese Restaurant” multiple times in The Oregonian and Willamette Week, and also rated the top Lebanese restaurant several times by City Search.  In 2010, Tony's younger brother, Claude, an airline pilot, came onboard (no pun intended) and together, they broadened this vision even more.  They began transferring Lebanese cuisine from retail to wholesale, with the purpose of conveniently making this fresh, authentic food available to every local Oregonian at their local grocery store.

They also spent many hours in their home kitchens, creating an exceptional dessert, and transforming it into an extensive variety of tantalizing fruit parfaits and tarts which have come to be known as Sweetsop Delight.  It is a family vision, if we may say, of an explosion of flavor radiating from this rare tropical fruit called “Anόn” in Spanish; sweetsop in English.