He was just trying to impress a girl when he whipped up a silky garlic-lemon sauce based on a recipe from his Lebanese
mother, but that simple recipe has grown into a line of products for Seattle restaurateur Anis Karam savored by devotees
around the country.
Today, Karam's small restaurant kitchen produces 1,000-plus bottles a week of his aptly named Garlic Sauce, now sold in
about 200 retail outlets from Portland to Bellingham.
A blend of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, it is a sauce with a thousand uses, aficionados say.
Savory enough to persuade a toddler to eat -- and love! -- her broccoli, fans squirt Garlic Sauce onto everything from
grilled chicken and fish to stir-fries, baked potatoes or eggs-over- easy.
"You can use it on anything," Karam said. "There is nothing like it in the market."
Karam also sells roughly equal units of the other products in his Middle-Eastern-themed line, which includes the
eggplant-based spread baba ghanouj, the chickpea-based dip hummus, falafel pita sandwiches, sesame-based
tahini-garlic sauce, plain tahini, and the creamy and exotic Karamage, a goat's milk cream cheese seasoned with garlic
and peppermint and topped with oregano, sumac, thyme and sesame seeds.
Nearly every product save the plain tahini features a good dose of garlic, fitting for a company whose informal motto is
"You can never have too much sex or garlic."
"We always recommend eating it raw," Karam said of his Garlic Sauce, touting studies that show the so-called stinking rose
may well help lower blood pressure and cholesterol as well as act as a powerful antioxidant. (The company's literature even
hints that garlic may act as an aphrodisiac -- although both parties had better be partaking.)
To preserve the healthy properties of the sauce, he recommends adding it to foods after cooking.
Although the ingredient list is simple, his Garlic Sauce has proved tough for competitors or home cooks to replicate, Karam
said. As far as home cooks are concerned, it's likely cheaper to buy the sauce than to assemble its ingredients,
anyway, he said.
It's also inspired a cultlike following among people around the country.
It's not uncommon for him to receive mail orders for 12 or even 24 bottles at a time, especially around the holiday season.
His customer base stretches from Hawaii to Florida, with plenty of stops in states such as Utah, Oklahoma and Vermont.
Other customers routinely hand-carry the sauce to friends or family in Sweden, Norway and Germany.
A number have learned of the product through the company's Web site, www.garlicsauce.com. Many of them have posted
comments there.
"Your garlic sauce is the most incredible thing in the world," gushed one fan from Quilcene, adding: "It's the most
indispensable product in a world with lots of dispensable things." Said another, a group of employees at a Seattle hospital:
"We are addicted, and are starting a support group for those dependent on Karam's Garlic Sauce."
Another said this of the first President Bush, whose loathing of broccoli was legendary: "If President Bush could taste this on
his broccoli, he would smack his lips and yell for more."
Although it has no artificial additives, Karam's Garlic Sauce has a shelf life in the refrigerator of a minimum of six months,
making it an attractive product for consumers with any size household, since it doesn't have to be consumed within a short
period, Karam notes.
The sauce wears a funky label with swooping writing encircling a photo of Karam's mother, Rose, whose fine cooking at their
home at the crossroads of the ocean beaches and mountains of Lebanon inspired Karam's recipes.
Karam, one of seven boys, always loved cooking at his mother's side. Their traditional cuisine emphasized fresh ingredients,
from chicken to tomatoes, many of them grown or raised in their own garden. His parents, in the Middle Eastern tradition,
always welcomed visitors to their table, whether family or strangers, Karam said.
"She's just a great cook," he said of his mother. "We were always ready for visitors, anyone from anywhere. When people
grow up in this environment, they always eat with lots of other people. When I was first here (in the United States), it was
strange to me to see just two or three people eating together."
Karam came to this country to pursue his education. While earning his master's degree in political science and a Ph.D.
in public administration, he'd have fellow students and teachers to his table to eat and talk politics, and a number urged him
to open a restaurant.
When a promising site opened up 15 years ago on Capitol Hill, he jumped in, naming it Karam's. His mother helped out for
six years. For many of those years, she peeled all the garlic by hand needed to make their trademark sauce. Today, their
operation is more technologically advanced, and they've closed the restaurant at lunchtime to concentrate on their retail line.
It still does a good trade at night, recently earning a rating of "excellent" from the Zagat guides.
As for the girl he was trying to impress those many years ago, it must have worked: Karam and his wife, Julie, have been
married 22 years.