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When Sami & Susu first opened, it wasn’t a restaurant in any respect. It was a normal retailer stocked with tahinis, olive oils and honey, promoting sandwiches and salads to maintain the lights on throughout Covid. It wasn’t the meals Amir Nathan wished to prepare dinner, but it surely was the one manner ahead.
“We weren’t showcasing our full capabilities,” he tells Shawn Walchef, host of Restaurant Influencers. The pivot to a full-service restaurant in 2022 modified every little thing. Inside months, the power within the house shifted from transactional to electrical.
Now attempt reserving a desk at Sami & Susu. In the event you’re fortunate, you may snag one three weeks out. If not, you may be left scrolling by Instagram, watching different folks dig into hanger steak over creamed corn, heirloom tomato salad piled onto thick sourdough, and crispy sweetbreads which have made new followers of organ meat.
The Decrease East Aspect restaurant fills up night time after night time, a spot the place the meals is as electrical because the room itself. Nathan and his co-founder, Justin Anderson, constructed it from the bottom up, incomes a Michelin Bib Gourmand three years working. You’d assume success like this meant a seamless path — clear imaginative and prescient, strong backing, easy execution. Not even shut.
Nathan did not launch Sami & Susu with a dream investor, a foolproof enterprise mannequin or deep pockets. Errors had been made. Budgets blew up. If he had targeted solely on the numbers, he says, the restaurant would not have lasted a 12 months.
As a substitute, they pushed ahead, adjusted and constructed one thing higher. Sami & Susu developed — first as a pop-up, then a normal retailer and eventually into the type of restaurant the place folks battle for a reservation.
A reputation that runs deep
The title Sami & Susu is a press release.
It comes from an Israeli TV present that symbolized coexistence, a nod to Nathan’s roots. It is also a tribute to a no-frills Romanian steakhouse in his hometown of Be’er Sheva, a spot the place plates of kebabs, piles of garlic, and infinite vodka outline a meal.
That blend of heritage, nostalgia and daring, unfussy cooking is what drives Sami & Susu’s menu. It is not strictly Israeli or strictly European, but it surely’s Nathan’s personal mix of affect and intuition.
Nathan knew he wished to prepare dinner earlier than he even understood what that meant. At eight years previous, he watched a TV chef make gnocchi, determined he may do the identical and turned his mother and father’ kitchen right into a one-night-only pop-up. He made the dish from scratch, arrange a eating space and proudly served his household.
That spark by no means left. From kitchens in Israel to a few of New York’s most acclaimed eating places, Nathan constructed his profession by taking dangers and figuring issues out as he went.
Now, with Sami & Susu packed each night time, he is setting his sights on one thing new.
Nathan’s subsequent venture, Shifka, takes a pita-first strategy to Center Jap flavors and has a format that may scale. He does not need a huge chain, however he does see room for development past New York.
Shifka could be the future, however Sami & Susu remains to be pure New York. Intimate, sudden, and unattainable to pin down. It is the type of place the place Valentine’s Day means 4 programs of beef coronary heart, every paired with a distinct glowing wine. It is about attempting new flavors and never taking part in it secure — and that is precisely why folks hold coming again.
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