Nearly eight years after fleeing the U.S. with tax evasion and other federal charges hanging over his head, former Talal Chahine, founder of the restaurant chain known as La Shish, tells Niraj Warikoo of the Free Press he would like to return to America one day.
"I miss my home," Chahine said in a recent phone interview with the Free Press from Beirut, Lebanon. "I miss my friends. I spend 35 years there. From (the age of) 15 to 50, all I knew as home was the United States. God knows I never compromised my loyalty at any point of time."
Chahine -- speaking out publicly for the first time since 2006 -- said he was the victim of a post-Sept. 11, 2001, atmosphere that led to overzealous targeting of Arab Americans and Muslims in metro Detroit.
From a restaurant at Michigan Avenue at Oakman in Dearborn in the late 1980s, Chahine, a former engineer at Ford Motor, built a highly successful chain of Mideastern restaurants that brought shish tawook and hummus to a broad audience in metro Detroit. He had plans to take the chain national.
Then an indictment by a federal grand jury got in the way.
