When translated from Swahili to English, “mahari” means “gift.” A gift is exactly what the restaurant Mahari’s director of community and culture, Magic Johnson, wants every guest to receive in their time at his restaurant. 

Mahari opened in early 2025 and is located inside the Hyde Park Shopping Center on East 55th Street. Rooted in the center of Hyde Park, Mahari strives to provide the community with foods that remind people of their roots and allow flavors of all the African diaspora to hold one home. 

This is where Mr. Johnson comes in. 

A friendly face to many Hyde Park and Kenwood residents, Mr. Johnson uses his endless friendliness to build a stronger community inside and outside of Mahari, and what better way to do that than through food? 

“Think of flavors, they come from different cultures,” Mr. Johnson said. “When you get people to sit in the room and come together and feast and break bread together, now you’re thinking of community.”

In conjunction with Lisa Brown and Rahim Muhammad, Mr. Johnson strived to fill a void he found in the Hyde Park community by opening Mahari.

“In our neighborhood, there’s no access to any of the flavors of the diaspora all in one place. So it was important to us to bring that to the neighborhood,” Mr. Johnson said. “Thinking about all the different cultures in Hyde Park that don’t get to go home and feel at home anymore, it’s important to make them feel at home when they come through these doors.”

Throughout Mr. Johnson’s life and in the generations before him, food has been a part of his and his family’s world. Creating community through food is in Mr. Johnson’s blood.

“My grandmother used to own an ice cream shop, and my grandfather owned an ice cream truck,” Mr Johnson said. “It was special to see them hold down that business of serving the people and serving food.” 

Mr. Johnson has continued this tradition of serving the people since he was a child. 

“My mom taught me how to bake. I would bake pies, cakes, banana puddings, pound cakes, and I would go to church and I would sell them,” Mr. Johnson said.

Now, Mr. Johnson goes around the neighborhood to other local businesses and helps Mahari partner with them, which shows profit for both companies and increases community and overlap between different parts of Hyde Park.

“We partner with a lot of local farms, and we partner with Demera, the Ethiopian restaurant, by using their spice that we make into honey,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson strives to connect all different parts of the community and use Mahari as a place to bring different cultures and ideas together. 

“I tie in all the different styles of our cultures, all other cultures of the world, and see how we can bring them all together, make it warm,” Mr. Johnson said. 

Coming from a big family, community has always been essential to Mr. Johnson’s life. Even now, Mahari’s executive chef, Mr. Muhammad, or Chef Rah, is Mr. Johnson’s childhood friend.

“My mom has 14 kids,” Mr. Johnson said. “There’s 11 boys and three girls, so just growing up in that household, we had to be a community, because if we wanted something from her, we had to work together.” 

Using his people skills and electric energy, Mr. Johnson tries to bring this sense of family to Mahari for everyone, guests and staff alike, so when guests leave Mahari with their stomachs full and hearts happy, Mr. Johnson knows he has given them the gift of food.