Our kitchen

Everyone knows falafel. Almost nobody outside the Levant knows sabich, and that is a shame, because sabich might be the best thing you can put inside a pita. What is sabich? Sabich is an Iraqi-Jewish dish we fell in love with on our travels. Fried eggplant, sliced egg, hummus and tahini, chopped salad, and pickles, all layered in warm pita. It began as a Shabbat morning breakfast, made from things prepared the day before, and grew into one of the Middle East's great street fo

Two of us started Deli Santa Maria. She is vegan. He eats meat & we both love good coffee. We could not have opened a restaurant that only worked for one of us. That was the constraint that shaped everything. Every dish that went on the menu had to be worth ordering. The falafel and hummus because they are genuinely good, not because we needed a vegan option. The lamb because it is the best local lamb we could find, not because a mixed menu needed one meat dish. About 80% of