Meet Philly Hummus Girl, the chef behind the city’s most inventive Lebanese mezze

When Miranda Stephen, the chef behind the cult favorite pop-up Philly Hummus Girl, enters a party, she never comes empty-handed.

Her Lebanese mother taught her to always show up with a plate of homemade food. So, when Stephens moved to Philly in late 2020 and began making friends, she would arrive at their COVID-safe parties with a big bowl of her smooth, luscious hummus.

“People would come up to me throughout the party [and ask], ‘Are you the hummus girl?’” Stephen recalled. “And the name kind of just stuck — I became known as the hummus girl, unofficially.”

Six years later, Stephen is — officially — Philly Hummus Girl, thanks to her widely popular passion project, which she operates out of Culinary Collective commercial kitchens. PHG offers a monthly takeout menu, featuring Lebanese and Middle Eastern mezze, sold in person at farmers markets and online — her most popular dishes include date-syrup brisket hummus, dill pickle labneh dip, smoky-sweet muhummara. Her menu also features inventive dishes like duck shawarma, pumpkin kibbeh, and braised lamb shoulder on focaccia available only for online ordering every other Tuesday and Thursday for pickup and delivery within the Philadelphia area.

Though Stephen, the 29-year-old Italian Market-resident, had been making food for friends, it wasn’t until 2024 that she decided to take her mezze operation in a commercial direction, sharing her Lebanese culture with Philadelphians. “Every single Lebanese dish is a labor of love, and to make that accessible [to Philadelphians] is very important to me,” she said.

The latter months of that year were difficult for Stephen. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza and southern Lebanon, she wanted to find a way to help her Lebanese community abroad. “It was a lot to wake up every single morning [to] not check the news [but] check my messages to see if my family was OK, to see if places that I grew up going to were still there — did they still exist — and go back to work,” she said. Stephen “realized this is my moment to take this little passion project and turn it into something that’s actually impactful and meaningful.”

In October, she began Philly Hummus Girl with mezze dishes for charity, raising money for the Lebanese Red Cross. (She recently hosted another fundraising menu for Lebanon, spurred by the current conflict overseas, featuring hummus, baba ganoush, za’atar manoushe with foccacia from Christina Lower of @bakebakephilly, and more.)

When she was laid off from her marketing job a month later, Stephen launched Philly Hummus Girl full-time out of her rowhome near the Italian Market. Soon, she booked a 120-person wedding gig and realized she needed a commercial kitchen. In 2025, Philly Hummus Girl found its home at Culinary Collective.

Stephen’s recipes are influenced by her international background and multi-hyphenate identity: she’s Lebanese and Black, born in Bethlehem, Pa.; grew up in Dubai; lived in Lancaster, Pa.; moved back to Dubai then to Macon, Ga., and briefly Pittsburgh, before settling down in Philadelphia.

Take her date-syrup brisket hummus, for example: it’s reflection of her transition from Dubai, where she loved eating doughnut balls coated in date syrup, to college in Macon, where she fell in love with Southern-style brisket. “We have hummus bil lahme, which is lamb or beef on top of hummus ... I felt like let’s have brisket on it,” she said. “And you always see pomegranate-glazed lamb, so [I thought] why hasn’t anyone tried dates?”

“You’ll find the traditional [on the menu], but there’s always going to be one or two things where it’s like, yeah, that’s Miranda,” she said.

Stephen is working towards her ultimate goal: a neighborhood cafe and market that will be the hub for all things Lebanese in Philly, named after her late grandfather, Frederick Jabbour Stephen, who owned Mediterranean restaurants in the Lehigh Valley in the 70s.

She envisions a brick-and-mortar for Philadelphians to enjoy her colorful mezzes and creative dishes and a third place for local Arabs to find a bit of home in Philly.

“Philly Hummus Girl is a love letter to Philly because this is a city that has embraced me,” she said.