Lotfallah Atta spent his first years in America as a strongman/acrobat in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, where he was called "Big Mike." He settled in New York in 1894 and opened a restaurant catering to his fellow Syrians on the parlor floor of 71 Washington Street. In addition to serving Syrian food, Atta provided water pipes to smoke and offered 'araq to drink. Restaurants served as meeting places for the associations founded in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Gabriel Abu Kalil and his brothers opened Kalil's restaurant at 61 Cortlandt Street in 1895, which eventually became a gigantic restaurant complex on Park Row, comprising a thousand-seat restaurant, four smoking parlors and live music every day.