Even the most adventurous eater may not be familiar with egusi stew from West Africa. Or the savory Swahili rich dish known as pilau. Then there is sambusak, a Mediterranean golden meat-filled pastry. These are some of the unique international recipes available to home cooks, accompanied by step-by-step guided videos, via the Habuyta website and app. The platform is designed and curated by Jewish entrepreneur and St. Louis resident Orly David Peters.
The Jewish Light first profiled Peters in March 2023, when the suburban Israeli-American was developing Habuyta as an online community to assist home cooks in turning their culinary skills into thriving businesses. Habuyta is now up and running, with a variety of tools for anyone who enjoys cooking and eating dishes representing different cultures.
Habuyta celebrates and embraces cultures from around the globe through the power of food. Its mission is to celebrate diversity, empower home cooks and build stronger, more inclusive communities.
One Sunday each month, Habuyta features a live cooking demo from a local home chef who prepares a dish from their home country. All videos are recorded and available to view afterwards on the Habuyta YouTube channel. They include a July demo making hummus from scratch with expert cook Elie Harir and an August class on medovik, a Ukrainian dessert.
In addition to the cooking demos, Habuyta allows users to swap recipes and connect with other fans of ethnic food. A wide array of mouth-watering recipes is already available on the app. Peters described how Habuyta works.
“It’s a unique model that allows users to connect with each other, access professionals and resources in their area, search for, and soon obtain, hard-to-find ingredients,” she said. “We are building out the app and we’ll be adding a marketplace feature, which is our golden feature. Home cooks and food sellers can easily and smoothly set up their virtual stores, using them as their point of sale while enjoying an on-demand market.”
Most social media apps focused on food don’t have that feature, Peters said. She plans to offer small business food purveyors a tool to more easily sell their specialty items to a hungry audience.
“For example, one home cook I support uses grape leaves in her cooking,” she said. “She grows them herself because she can’t find the exact type of grape leaves that have the right taste. Many immigrants come to the U.S., and they can’t find the food or ingredients they need to cook their native foods.”
Peters hopes to support small local farmers through the app, too. She also has a goal of encouraging healthier eating in “food desert” communities that don’t have access to nutritious foods.
“It’s not just in St. Louis,” Peters said. “The idea is to make healthy food accessible to everyone in any community.”
Recently, Habuyta received a $10,000 grant toward that mission from the nonprofit organization Food City STL. Funding from the grant will help empower home cooks to succeed in their cooking enterprises.
You can download the Habuyta app for Apple and Android devices here.
