Vermont Comedy Club boss Mo AlDoukhi cracks eggs and makes jokes

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• Lukas Awtry
• Mo AlDoukhi at the Vermont Comedy Club

Chef Mo Aldoukhi

• position: Head chef and kitchen manager
• Age: 23
• Type of kitchen: A mixture of oriental-inspired breakfast and lunch dishes and “drunk people food”
• Experience: Started cooking in his mother’s restaurant in Lebanon at the age of 9. While at school in the Netherlands, he worked in restaurants in France, the UK and Spain during school holidays.
• What’s on the menu: Six types of breakfast burritos; chicken shawarma wraps in garlic sauce with French fries and pomegranate molasses; crispy falafel burgers; fried appetizer plates; nachos; and an Arabic breakfast buffet with homemade hummus, baba ghanoush, labneh, cheese za’atar omelette, pickles and pita chips

As for the food at a comedy club, the style is “stuff you can easily eat with your hands in the dark,” said Natalie Miller, co-owner of the Vermont Comedy Club. “You don’t expect it to be good.”

That’s why comedians on tour usually subsist on chicken fingers. But when they come to the Burlington Club, they can order beef shawarma and baba ghanoush – and so can the audience. The club’s eclectic menu features American bar hits right next to traditional Middle Eastern dishes, thanks to executive chef Mo AlDoukhi, who took over the position last November.

AlDoukhi is now cooking “drunk food” with the best of them, in his second menu iteration. “Or hungover food,” she added, thinking of the extensive breakfast and lunch menu at the comedy club’s daytime alter ego, Happy Place Café. “He’s a guy in his 20s; he knows what people want to eat.”

And he makes damn good hummus. AlDoukhi is Palestinian and grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. The recipe comes from his late mother and Jomana’s famous hummus has a place of honor on the menu.

Fittingly, AlDoukhi is also an aspiring comedian. On an open mic night, he leaves the kitchen to go on stage and make a performance, apron still on.

“He’s dark,” Miller said, laughing. “He’s been through a lot, so his sense of humor is darker than most. But he’s so damn likable that he always has the audience on his side.”

AlDoukhi sat down with Seven days to talk about his Middle Eastern-influenced menu and tell a few jokes.

You worked both the cash register and the kitchen when you started at Vermont Comedy Club in 2021. How did you become a head chef?

It was one of the healthiest kitchens I’ve ever worked in, and I’ve worked in a lot of kitchens in my 14-year career. In this one, everyone liked each other. Everyone made jokes. I thought to myself: This is not a typical kitchen.

I mentioned to Ryan (Kenyon, the club’s former head chef) that we could use another vegetarian option like hummus. He made hummus, I tried it, and it was not bad. But I thought to myself: I am a Middle Eastern person. I think I could do better.

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What is your secret?

My mother always told me, “Don’t stress. Let the food processor do the work.”

How did you put your stamp on the menus here?

I like it when you go to a restaurant and the people there have their thing. My specialty is oriental food because that’s the food I’ve cooked since I was little. I started working in my mother’s restaurant when I was 9. I learned so quickly that when I was 11 she stopped coming to work. I ran the kitchen for her.

But the kitchen here is much smaller than the kitchen at home and I don’t have a shawarma oven, so I had to improvise.

I thought you were a more decent guy. (Collective groaning.) Is there any overlap between comedy and cooking?

How quick and to the point it should be. The fewer words to get to the point, the better – and the fewer words to describe what a food contains, the better. Everyone knows what onion rings are.

Do you cook at home?

Not really. The way I see it is that a massage therapist wouldn’t like to give a massage outside of work hours. But when we baked bread at home for the restaurant, I always made extra bread for myself. So technically I was cooking for myself.

Now people ask, “Why are there so many protein options?”

Because I’m building mass.

Do you tell fitness jokes?

I asked a friend the other day what kind of protein shake he was drinking and he said “vegan.” I was like, “No whey protein?”

I recently shared one of them on stage: I’m making great progress in the gym. Today I did lunges for the first time. That was a huge step forward.

When did you become interested in comedy?

Since I was about seven, I was watching clips in English. And I didn’t speak English, I only understood English. I thought to myself: That sounds sick. You can just stand on stage by yourself and make people laugh.

When (Vermont Comedy Club) reopened in August 2021, I took a standup class here to help me feel more comfortable on stage, especially because I’m doing it in a foreign language. Nathan (Hartswick, co-owner of the club) was leading the class and said I had an Anthony Jeselnik-style act, so very dark jokes but with a dry face. Then I said: I could actually do that.

Where did you grow up?

In a small refugee camp called Rashidieh Camp in Lebanon, as a Palestinian refugee. Technically, I have neither Palestinian nor Lebanese citizenship. I was going to say, “According to the FDA,” but the FDA has nothing to do with this.

By definition, I am stateless. But now I am a foreigner with a work permit.

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• Lukas Awtry
• Southwestern Breakfast Burrito

What brought you to Vermont?

It’s a medium-sized story. I got accepted to a college in Indiana, but I felt more like a performer than a student. Deep down, the reason I did well in school was to get a scholarship and get out of Lebanon. Then I did it and I thought: Well, now I am not so passionate about learning.

I’m more of a performer and cook, which is the perfect job here. My full-time dream is to do stand-up comedy. And if that doesn’t work out, I can always open an oriental restaurant.

When I left college, my visa was canceled. So I was trying to find places to emigrate to, and Canada was (appealing) because Jim Carrey is from Canada. So I thought: Oh, they have a good comedy scene there.

I wanted to cross the border, but it was March 2020 and the taxi driver refused to take me to the border. I googled places to stay and found Spectrum (Youth & Family Services in Burlington). They didn’t have beds for a while, so I lived in a tent. Then I got a bed and lived there for about a year and a half while I applied for asylum – I wasn’t allowed to work for the first year. Then I found the Comedy Club.

What a story!

Thank you very much. I worked hard on it. (Laugh.)

Do you tell jokes about food?

All my other jokes are too dark for a newspaper. My sense of humor is mostly based on traumas I’ve experienced. When I joke about it, people think I’m trying to insult them or am making it up just to say something awful. But no, I’m just making a joke about something that actually happened to me. I’m saying something awful though. But I’ll add a silly pun to make it funny.

OK, tell me a joke about food.

I’m making a burrito for somebody. I had stopped trying to make burritos because I had gotten really good at them. But when I went to get coffee, I saw the person who ordered the burrito and they looked Latino. So I thought: Oh, now I actually have to go back and do a good job.

I made the best burrito I’ve ever made. Then I walked up to him and said, “Provecho.”

He said, “What?” I said, “Provecho.” “What is that?”

“In Spanish it means ‘bon appetit’ because you’re Latino.”

He says, “I’m not Latino. What makes you think I’m Latino?”

I thought, “You’re brown.”

“You’re brown,” he said. “Are you Latino?”

And I said, “No.”

And he says, “See?”

“Yes.”

(Laugh.)

It’s a long way from a silly little joke. I’m always mistaken for a Latino, especially here.

One more?

One time we were out of apples in the kitchen and Ryan told me to get six Red Delicious apples. I, who is not a native speaker, said, “How do you know they’re good?” And he said, “Ha ha, you’re really funny.”

I ate apples at City Market to see if they tasted good. I don’t know what I would have done if he had told me to get six Granny Smiths.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.