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LOGAN — Restaurateur Saboor Sahely gives thanks in a big way — with a free Thanksgiving dinner for about 1,000 people. It’s a gesture of gratitude for all that’s happened in the past 30 years.
“I literally have to get up every day and thank God,” Sahely said.
In 1978, Sahely came to Logan to go to school. He’d traveled from a war zone. His home country of Afghanistan was embroiled in the Saur Revolution, the beginning of what would be 30 years of almost uninterrupted conflict in that country.
He said he was scared and broke when he arrived in Utah. He was trained to work in mining, but took a job washing dishes at a restaurant on Main Street and never left the restaurant business.
Over the years, he worked his way up to management in the chain and when that original restaurant went out of business, Sahely bought it and named it after his daughter, Angie, who was then 2 years old.
At first, he and his wife Kristine, whom he met when she was waiting tables at the restaurant, struggled financially.
“The first year when I opened, I never took a day off,” Sahely said. “Came to work at 5, 6 in the morning, stayed here until 10 at night trying to a make a living.”
Eventually, Angie’s found its place in the community and then had financial success.
Sahely, at first considered a foreigner, has now become a fixture in the community. In 2016, the Logan Herald named Sahely their “resident of the year.”
And he considers his regular customers family.
That was evident on a recent morning. As the early lunch crowd filtered into the restaurant, Sahely worked the room, greeting customers more often than not by their first names.
“Hey Tony, how are you, bro?” Sahely said, greeting one customer.
“Hi Bonnie, hi Boyd, how’s it going?” he greeted others.
Signs outside the restaurant read, “Where the locals eat” and customers agree that’s more than a made-up slogan.
“No, the locals do eat here,” said Pat Gantt, a retired English professor at Utah State University.
“We have a customer base, they eat here three times a day, seven days a week,” Sahely said.
If a regular customer fails to show up, Sahely said an Angie’s employee will take a bowl of soup and knock on their door.
Gantt, a widow, said she eats here every day, sometimes twice a day.
“I literally fell in love with a community and fell in love with a customer base,” Sahely said.
Perhaps his warmth and generosity came with his Afghan roots.
“Maybe coming from a culture, from a place that hospitality was such a big deal,” he said. “When people walk through your door, to your home, you treat them like a king and queen. People who walk through the door of my restaurant are basically walking into my home. They come into my home and you have to treat them with honor and respect and dignity.”
When he arrived in Logan 30 years ago, Sahely had never heard of a holiday devoted to turkey and gratitude. A customer who was a janitor at Utah State University invited him home for Thanksgiving — an act of kindness Sahely never forgot.
“I told my wife, 'someday when we can afford it, we’re gonna open our doors on Thanksgiving Day and basically offer a free meal,'” he said. And that’s what Angie’s began doing in 1990, inviting everyone to have turkey and fixings — on the house.
Now they serve more than a thousand people each year on Thanksgiving. Some, he said, aren’t comfortable accepting free meals, so Sahely uses the event to raise money for charity.
This year, they’re soliciting donations for the Little Lambs Foundation which helps foster kids and struggling families.
“As a business, we have a moral obligation and a civic responsibility to give back to the community,” he said.
Sahely said he has a lot to be thankful for this holiday.
“I’m thankful to be able to live in a place that has inspired me to do great things. I’m thankful for living in this wonderful community,” he said. “I’m thankful for a wonderful wife and five beautiful kids and two grandkids and I’m thankful to be able to have a business and the doors are still open and to be able to make an honest living.”
Editor's note: This article previously used the term "Afghani," which is the currency in Afghanistan, instead of "Afghan," which refers to a person from Afghanistan.
