Why I Started HALALLABOUTIT

I have been sitting on this for seven years.

Not because I did not believe in the idea. Not because I did not think there was a need for it. Honestly? I just did not want to show my face.

But here we are. And I think it is time to tell the story.

I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Went to Apex High School, then NC State University, where I got my degree in Business Administration with a concentration in IT. But the education that actually shaped how I think about food and hospitality did not happen in a classroom.

It happened in a kitchen.

I spent years working in the service industry, starting in high school and running all the way through college. Restaurants, front of house, back of house, I saw how it all worked from the inside. I learned what separates a good restaurant from a great one. I learned what makes people come back and what makes them never return. I learned that food is not just food. It is an experience. It is a reflection of who you are and what you care about.

For Muslim Americans, that experience has always been a little more complicated.

I come from an Afghan family, and in Afghan culture, food is not a side conversation. It is the main event. It is how we celebrate, how we grieve, how we show love, how we bring people together. A meal is never just a meal.

And as a Muslim, what I eat is also an expression of my faith. Halal is not a preference. It is a requirement. So every time I walk into a restaurant, I am asking a question that most people never have to think about: can I actually eat here?

For years, finding good halal food in America felt like a scavenger hunt with no map. You asked around. You checked Google reviews and hoped someone mentioned it. You called the restaurant and got a vague answer. You showed up and took a chance.

There had to be a better way.

At some point I stopped just working in restaurants and started running one. I owned and operated a smash burger restaurant right here in Raleigh for about a year. It did well. Better than I expected, honestly. But more than anything, that year taught me more about what actually makes a food business work than all the years before it combined.

That experience also confirmed something I already suspected. The gap in the halal food space was not about supply. There were halal restaurants out there. The gap was about discovery, trust, and community. People did not know where to go. And when they found a place, they had no reliable way to share that with other Muslims who needed to know.

I had spent a decade doing brand and marketing strategy, working with restaurants and businesses across different industries. I knew what it looked like when a community did not have a voice. And I knew what it looked like when someone finally gave them one.

The idea for HALALLABOUTIT has been with me for about seven years. A platform built around halal food discovery, honest reviews, and real experiences shared by real people. Not a generic directory. Not a listing site. Something with a point of view.

I kept putting it off. Mostly because building something like this meant putting myself out there, and I was not ready for that.

But food has always been personal to me. My culture, my faith, my career, all of it runs through food in some way. At some point I realized I was not just interested in this space. I was built for it.

So I started filming. Started reviewing. Started showing up as the face of something I had been thinking about for years.

Food is where we start. But it is not where we stop.

HALALLABOUTIT is a guide to halal life. That means restaurant reviews and city guides, yes. But it also means halal travel, Muslim-owned businesses worth knowing about, cultural experiences, and everything that shapes what it feels like to live as a Muslim in America and around the world.

There is no single place that covers all of that honestly and with a real point of view. That is what this is supposed to be.

I am Miz. I grew up in this community, worked in this industry, and have been thinking about this platform for longer than I want to admit. I am not here to be an influencer. I am here because this resource should exist and nobody else was building it.

Welcome to HALALLABOUTIT. We are just getting started.