Computers are what brought Maher Jabbour to the United States, but it was food that drove him into business.

The former Microsoft employee bought Byblos Deli from its previous owner in 2004, taking over one of the few places that provided Mediterranean food and groceries in Bellevue.

Jabbour closed shop last year, but it wasn’t for good. He moved Byblos from its original downtown location to a more residential part of town, east of 140th Avenue Northeast on Northeast 20th Street.

In its place he opened a restaurant called Garlic Crush, which has an expanded Mediterranean menu.

Byblos’ market caters to Middle Eastern, Greek and Turkish clientele, offering the traditional staples of those areas like hummus, spices, olive oil, grape leaves, cheeses, pickled goods, and even hookahs.

The deli is suited to anyone looking for quick Mediterranean food, serving up baba ghanouge, falafel, gyros, and schwarma.

All products in the store are imported from the Mediterranean region.

Jabbour grew up in Lebanon and lived there until the age of 23, when he took his computer science degree to Dubai and became a Microsoft vendor. He worked on-and-off in the U.S. as contractor for the company before joining full-time as a test engineer in 2000.

That’s when he got involved with Byblos. It was a matter of dabbling at first, but Jabbour’s passion for the business grew over time and overcame his desire to stick with the relative safety of a corporate job.

“I quit Microsoft to do the restaurant,” he said. “I would have stayed, but there’s no time to do everything.”

Jabbour now employs his mother and father at Byblos, and his brother owns Mediterranean Express in Seattle.

Reporter: Why did you decide to become a full-time business owner?

Jabbour: It was mostly what I like to do. I like testing and programming, but mostly my passion was food, especially making sandwiches. That was a major factor, and also the location that I have. Being in downtown Bellevue and seeing all the growth around me made me excited about sharing this kind of food. I could see the demand. It’s rare. You have all the same choices – a lot of French fries and burgers and Mexican, and Chinese – but there was no Mediterranean fast food that’s affordable and at the same time quick and healthy.

Reporter: Do you ever regret leaving Microsoft?

Jabbour: There are advantages and disadvantages to everything. It’s exciting when you see everyone come and enjoy the food. That was the main thing for me. I have good flavors and I want to share them. The other side is the time for family. It was a more balanced life where I was working before. It’s also good to be employed when you have a family. You get health insurance that covers everything.

Reporter: Why did you move Byblos to this location and open Garlic Crush downtown?

Jabbour: It’s the demand for food. People wanted more sandwiches and more variety. As a deli, we were limited. I knew I could do more things if I had a big kitchen. All of our customers know us for our food, so it’s a good start and a good location. People who used to come for the grocery can easily find us here because they live here (near Byblos) rather than downtown. It worked perfectly for us. People go to Garlic Crush to ask about the deli, and we give them directions.

Reporter: How is the new game-plan working out?

Jabbour: Perfect. There were a lot of factors with the economy, and people were not buying as much. But people realized this is how the market is, and they went back to their old habits with what they buy. Now we’re back at the same level we were in before we moved.

Reporter: How do you decide what to stock your shelves with?

Jabbour: I’m targeting two cultures: Turkish-Greek and Arabic. All of these people eat a lot of the same things. We have some Bulgarian and Eastern European things, too. Everything those countries export is here.

We don’t get anything that you find in the grocery story. We offer things that people are used to from growing up. They miss these things. They grew up in Turkey or the Middle East and work here and they miss certain things. There’s even chewing gum that we’ve brought over here.

Reporter: What kind of foods do you miss from the Middle East?

Jabbour: I miss what I have down at my restaurant – the shawarmas, the kebobs. I also miss the sweets – big trays of baklava and kenafeh. You need lots of clientele to sell that, because it has to stay warm. There has to be people coming and buying it all the time.

Reporter: What is kenafeh?

Jabbour: It’s very popular in the Middle East. It’s a hot dessert with cheese at the bottom and dough on top with sugar syrup. For that one you have to have it kept on a slow fire so it doesn’t dry out. You can’t find it here. I miss those.

Reporter: What is schwarma?

Jabbour: Schwarma is layers of meat, marinated with spices overnight and grilled on skewers. The process is hard. It was a scary because no one had yet done the schwarma skewers around here, just the gyro skewer. I was calling people in Montreal and Lebanon to teach me how to stack the meat. It’s hard by phone, but with experience and time and looking at pictures from back home, it works.

Reporter: What makes schwarma special?

Jabbour: When I first moved here, there was no schwarma meat, there was only gyro meat. When people come, they’re thankful we’re making it for them.

I used to spend my money and my time eating fast food in Lebanon, which for us was schwarma. Whenever my mom gave me money, I would get a schwarma sandwich. I would watch them cutting it and working with it, learning from that. I never thought one day that I would be doing it myself.

Joshua Adam Hicks can be reached at jhicks@bellevuereporter.com or 425-453-4290.