#immigrant-entrepreneurship

#immigrant-entrepreneurship

Walk through Boston's neighborhoods today and you'll find Thai, Korean, Italian, Indian - the city's food scene has come a long way. But in the 1930s, if you wanted something beyond American fare, your options were sparse. That's what makes Deeb G. Salem's decision to open The Nile all the more remarkable. Right in the heart of the Depression, this Syrian immigrant and his wife Rose decided to open a restaurant on Hudson Street, transforming it into one of New England's most talked-about dining destinations.

After living in the U.S. for seven years, Hung recently took the streets of New York by storm with an informal, intriguing business. The idea started three years ago when thousands of his fellow Venezuelans came to the Big Apple, but it only materialized a few weeks ago when he began selling portions of Venezuelan-style fried rice (a tropicalized version of the famous chow fan rice, which includes beef, chicken, shrimp, diced ham, vegetables, and wheat germ) in Brooklyn.

Lopez was born in the state of Puebla in the Mixteca region of Mexico, a mountainous territory whose namesake is derived from the Nahuatl word for "between the clouds." He dreamed of becoming a doctor, but when money put that dream out of reach, he followed an ill-fated romance to New York. Over the next six years, he fell in love again, welcomed the eldest of his five children and kept the lights on by selling hot dogs and hamburgers from a kiosk in Central Park.