Emad yacoub biography
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Emad Yacoub
After a couple of successful ego-boosting years at Joe Fortes, Bud let Emad go. “I was humbled bygd that experience. But it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, career wise.”
In 2002, with his experience and a new attitude in tow, Emad launched the glowbal grill steaks and satay in Yaletown with 8 staff members. He wanted to create a samling place for friends and family with worldly cuisine featuring the freshest west coast ingredients. A week later they had 19 staff, as they knew they had a hit on their hands. And they’ve been rolling ever since. Between 2002 and 2011, Emad and his team opened Coast, Italian Kitchen, Trattoria, and Black & Blue, all which have become Vancouver standouts.
“Today we have over 10 restaurants each with its own concept and personality,” says Yacoub. “We have another chophouse concept in development that will be close to the Vancouver Convention Centre, but even more exciting is the fact that we’re now looking a
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Glowbal Reach: Six Hot Vancouver Restaurants
How Egyptian-born restaurateur
Emad Yacoub, CEO of Glowbal Restaurant Group, is bringing sexy back
to Vancouver’s staid dining scene.
It’s 1:30 on a rainy Tuesday afternoon and milling about the entry to Coast restaurant on Alberni Street is a knot of highly photogenic 30-somethings: a beefy doorman sporting a Bluetooth earpiece, a smiling hostess and a handful of sharply dressed women chatting, hair-flinging and glancing incessantly toward the entryway as they gather purses, coats and umbrellas.
Beyond the departing throng of lunching office workers, the visitor meets a wall of noise and light: conversation ricochets off the white tile floor, accompanied by the thumping beat of electronic dance music; at the centre is the restaurant’s defining feature, a tower of white light rising from a circular bar.
It is controlled chaos, and owner Emad Yacoub wouldn’t have it
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COVER: Glowbal romance
One summer, Shannon Bosa got a job as a hostess at the Joe Fortes restaurant in downtown Vancouver. On a particularly crazy Saturday night, a visiting chef from Toronto dropped by.
I remember him walking in, she says, almost 15 years later. The restaurant went silent.
Its time to hit pause on this tale of love at first sight. If a romance writer had her way, it would read like this: Man walks into restaurant. Womans heart stops. They make eye contact across a crowded room and instantly know theyve just met their destiny. They walk out of the restaurant arm in arm.
Although this story does indeed end up with a very happy ending, true life is often a bit more complicated than that...
The man who walked into Joe Fortes that night was Emad Yacoub. He and Shannon have been married for 12 years. They are each others best friend, have two young children who they both adore and together have built a Vancouver restaurant dynasty Glowbal Grill, Coast, Sanafir, Ital