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When Sami & Susu first opened, it wasn’t a restaurant in any respect. It was a basic 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 approach 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 the whole lot. Inside months, the vitality within the area shifted from transactional to electrical.
Now attempt reserving a desk at Sami & Susu. Should you’re fortunate, you will snag one three weeks out. If not, you will be left scrolling by Instagram, watching different individuals 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.
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The Decrease East Aspect restaurant fills up evening after evening, 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 suppose 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 centered solely on the numbers, he says, the restaurant would not have lasted a yr.
As a substitute, they pushed ahead, adjusted and constructed one thing higher. Sami & Susu advanced — first as a pop-up, then a basic retailer and eventually into the type of restaurant the place individuals battle for a reservation.
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A reputation that runs deep
The title Sami & Susu is an announcement.
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 outdated, 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 evening, he is setting his sights on one thing new.
Nathan’s subsequent undertaking, Shifka, takes a pita-first strategy to Center Japanese flavors and has a format that may scale. He would not need a huge chain, however he does see room for development past New York.
Shifka would be the future, however Sami & Susu remains to be pure New York. Intimate, sudden, and inconceivable 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 unique glowing wine. It is about making an attempt new flavors and never taking part in it protected — and that is precisely why individuals maintain coming again.
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