Morgantown restaurateur Elias Hishmeh has hosted patrons graciously and broadened palates for nearly 50 years.
written by REESE HANSEN
photographed by CARLA WITT FORD
THE YEAR IS 1979. A hole-in-the-wall Westover diner is challenging people with new flavors— and winning them over. The restaurant’s crown jewel: a gyro machine, the only one in the county, that fills the open kitchen and dining room with the scent of crackling meat as it revolves. Over the stove labors Elias Hishmeh, one of Morgantown’s future favorite restaurateurs, dreaming of a grander space with more parking.
The soul of Hishmeh’s cuisine came all the way from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. “The things I remember most about the food my mother fixed—it was one meal for everyone,” he reminisces about his childhood home in Palestine. “We were 12 people living in the house, so it was one big pot with one meal, whether it’s lamb, chicken, beef, all kind of vegetables, a big pot of fries on the side, and sometimes salads.”
Hishmeh immigrated to the U.S. in 1969. After time in New Jersey and Maryland and stints at United Parcel Service and an electric motor factory, he visited Morgantown in 1972 while working for his family’s carpet cleaning business. “I fell in love with this town,” he says. “My mother moved to Florida. They all followed—but I stayed in Morgantown.”
Having worked at and enjoyed his brother’s deli in Maryland, he and his wife, Debbie, envisioned a restaurant in Morgantown. A food dynasty was founded when Hishmeh opened his first Ali Baba restaurant on Holland Avenue in Westover in 1978.
Why “Ali Baba”? “If you’re familiar with the story of Ali Baba, the 40 thieves, we thought that was funny. We did Ali Baba, and it stuck,” he says. Just as the character Ali Baba began in humility, the restaurant Ali Baba began with familiar fare. “It was just shrimp in a basket, hamburger and fries—but people wanted the Mediterranean food.”
Some wanted it. For others, the new ingredients and flavors were challenging. “I always made you a sample plate—some hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganoush, tahini, some gyro, and some falafel,” Hishmeh recalls. “99% of people ordered what they tasted.”
The restaurant was a family affair, Hishmeh says. In the beginning it was just him and Debbie. “Then I called my brother, and he came down here and helped me.” Hishmeh’s son, Aaron Marko, had started to work with his father at the carpet cleaning business, and soon after Ali Baba opened, Marko made the jump to cooking, too. “Aaron did a lot of research on food. He learned fast and taught himself so many things that I learned from him, too. He was my right hand.”
After suffering from limited parking for years, Hishmeh called the genie from the lamp when he moved to Morgantown’s High Street in 1986. Business there was different—fast and upscale, with bold international flair. Spanning three floors packed with bars, dining rooms, banquet halls, kitchens, and Cedo’s nightclub in the basement, Ali Baba had as many as 82 employees at any one time.
Every night, diners found Hishmeh circulating hourly in his trademark suit from the table of one family to the next, shaking the hands of his guests and attending personally to their experience. “If a plate came back that was mostly full, he wanted to know, ‘Why didn’t you eat your food?’” Marko relates. “He never let anybody leave mad. There were a couple occasions where somebody walked out. My dad chased them down and brought them back or gave them a gift certificate to try again.”
In the ’90s, Hishmeh ran his booming operation at Ali Baba and, alongside that, a series of second restaurants: in Star City; in Sarasota, Florida; and across High Street—Mediterranean Market and Deli. But when the City of Morgantown offered him the restaurant space at the Morgantown Municipal Airport, he saw a chance to simplify things. “I just decided to downsize.”
Voyagers, later renamed Ali Baba, overlooked the activity on the runway. “We expanded the menu. We did a little bit more of curries, we did Mediterranean shrimp,” Hishmeh says. “Most of those changes came from Aaron.” Big names like Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld, traveling to Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, were served straight from Hishmeh’s and Marko’s kitchen.
Hishmeh sold the airport location in 2019. He has tried to retire several times. “You know, retirement wasn’t for me.” The family pitched in together to open Devino’s Pizzeria in 2022. Underpinning this latest restaurant are Hishmeh’s expertise and business sense, Marko’s meticulous refinement of the menu, and the day-to-day management of Hishmeh’s grandson, Kolbe Sparks. Devino’s upholds the same exacting standards of freshness and hospitality for which all of the family’s previous restaurants have been known.
A half-century here has made Morgantown a true home for Hishmeh. “I have opportunity to go to so many different places, big cities, but that’s not me. I like small towns,” he says. “No matter how much it’s going to grow, the people originally from Morgantown, they’re nice people, and very fun people, too. I’m not going anywhere.”
READ MORE ARTICLES FROM WV LIVING’S SPRING 2026 ISSUE
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