How two friends are making it easier for Muslims to find places to eat in Calgary

Their idea started with a conversation, two friends were looking for a place to eat at night. Very quickly, something much bigger than they expected happened.

Maaza, a user-generated Google map featuring more than 100 restaurants serving halal food in Calgary, Usman Kokar and Fazal Khan, saw thousands of people respond to their dataset within a week of its launch.

Halal means “permitted” in Arabic. It is a widely held belief in Islam that any meat a person consumes must be prepared in a way that makes it halal.

“I was expecting a few hundred (views),” Khan told CBC Calgary. The Homestretch.

About 1,700 people clicked on the cards the morning after they went live, he said.

“I know we're in a city of a million, but it's like a demand to know where the next halal food place is popping up.”

Maaza, explained Kokar, is an Urdu word meaning “fun” or “delicious.”

Social media pages to find halal restaurants in Calgary have been around for some time now, answering questions from hungry Muslims asking “where can I find halal pizza that doesn't taste like cardboard” and “where can I find halal Lanzhou-style noodles?” “

However, according to Kokar and Khan, it was a place where the community could easily find anything and everything they were looking for.

Image by Maaza, a user-generated Google map showing over 100 restaurants in Calgary that offer halal options. (Google map)

“Fazal and I identified and saw that there was a demand for a centralized database and an easily accessible information base,” Kokar said.

Developing the concept was a long process, but for the pair, their combined technical background and long-standing knowledge of Calgary's food scene made things easier.

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Khan, an accountant by profession, has been monitoring halal restaurants in Calgary for several years.

He would call places he was interested in and if they confirmed they offered halal options, he would mention them. Anytime a friend offers him a spot, Khan said that also goes into his notes.

Then the card came and Kokar took over.

“It was like my school lab days….Google has great tools for creators, it was very easy to start mapping,” said Kokar, a geomatics engineer.

“That effort, with Fazal's knowledge, was the perfect storm to bring it all together.”

Once the map was created and ready to populate, Kokar went back to the data he'd collected over the years, breaking it all down into categories like steakhouses, burger joints, fried chicken joints, and even hot-food restaurants.

The map includes restaurants that may not be surprising to some, such as Taj Kabob, an Afghan street food staple, and others that may be unexpected, such as downtown hotspot Major Tom and Regrub Strip.

Namo Cafe and Class Clown with dishes on the right and left offer halal options. (Submitted by Fazal Khan)

“Just by making this map and adding the data and all the different restaurants, I learned a lot of new information that I never knew before,” Kokar said.

“It was a really fun and exciting experience.”

The map also allows users to input ideas and make suggestions, giving it the feel of a community initiative. So far they have been full of announcements.

If success continues at this rate, they hope the map will evolve into an app or something bigger.