Food with a story.
Hospitality with heart.

Chef Mona Leena is a Palestinian-American chef, restaurateur, and hospitality professional with more than 16 years of experience creating memorable food and events throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Before launching her own businesses, Mona worked as a sous chef at Foxtail Catering in San Francisco, where she developed extensive experience executing events of every scale—from intimate private dinners for 10 guests to corporate gatherings for more than 500. Her background spans menu development, large-scale production, event logistics, and the thoughtful hospitality that makes each gathering feel personal, regardless of its size.

In 2020, Mona founded Lulu as a pop-up before growing it into a celebrated brick-and-mortar restaurant and, eventually, Lulu’s Little Kitchen. Her cooking draws from her Palestinian heritage, her California upbringing, and a career spent bringing people together around beautiful, deeply satisfying food.

With ASSAL, Mona returns to the kind of work she loves most: collaborating closely with clients to create distinctive menus and gatherings shaped around their tastes, their stories, and the experience they want their guests to remember.