Fans of Sami & Susu, the Mediterranean-inspired Lower East Side wine bar and restaurant that opened during the pandemic, will be happy to know that its Jewish owners have opened a lower priced, more casual spinoff just a few blocks away.
Shifka at 324 Bowery offers elevated Israeli-style street food — like pita stuffed with schnitzel, Yemenite hot sauce, pickles, hot pepper and red cabbage, drizzled with creamy Har Bracha tahini.
Shifka is named after the spicy, light green pickled pepper that’s a popular condiment at falafel shops across Israel. “It was supposed to be called The Pita Shop, but you can’t trademark that name — it’s too general,” said Amir Nathan, 39, one of Shifka’s store’s four owners and a co-founder of Sami & Susu. “I said, why don’t we call it after the pepper, like Chipotle. I like names that trigger curiosity. You need to think about the experience that you are about to have.”
Nearly a half-decade in the making — Nathan and his partner, executive chef Jordan Anderson, conducted years of pita sandwich experiments at Sami & Susu — Shifka opened its doors on Oct. 14, just after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began.
Throughout the development of Shifka, Nathan said that he and his partners were undeterred about opening another Israeli restaurant during a time of heightened antisemitism in New York. “When I see a crisis, I decide to do something positive,” said Nathan, who was born and raised in Beersheba, in southern Israel. “Opening Sami & Susu during the pandemic was a big one. And since Oct. 7, we emphasize more our Israeli and Jewish identity with the food that we do.”
Last winter, Nathan and Anderson took a “R&D trip” to Israel together. The goal, said Nathan, was to share Israeli cuisine with his partner, who was raised Jewish in New Jersey and had never visited Israel before.
“We went to classic pita shops in Israel but also toured the ASIF Culinary Institute and Arabic restaurants,” Nathan said. “How does a pita shop in Israel operate? How do they organize and order? Let’s be up to date with what is happening in the new generation of restaurants. It was a good introduction. We went to Akko to eat hummus and to a Druze restaurant in the north — all of the staples that together make this cuisine what it is.”
Nathan believes that their wide-ranging trip gave Anderson a better understanding of the flavors of the Middle East.
“Baguette, harissa, preserved lemon, hard-boiled egg — a Tunisian sandwich is what I ate in my school cafeteria in Beersheba,” Nathan said. “When I tried to explain to Jordan the idea behind it — now when he saw it in Machane Yehuda Market he said, ‘Wow, this is where it comes from.’ He saw food from Iraq to Yemen to East Jerusalem. The idea that a mash of those cultures can work together actually clicked.”
They also visited two restaurants that Anderson had read about: HaBasta, near the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv and known for the freshness and seasonality of its dishes, and HaKatan, a seafood restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Market.
“These chefs are cooking like me,” Anderson, who has a French culinary background, said of his new inspiration.
“We do a lot of upscale food at Sami & Susu,” the 33-year-old added. “It’s refreshing to do sandwiches and fast casual and spread your mind that way.”
At Sami & Susu, the menu is seasonal and changes eight times a year. The menu at Shifka, by contrast, is streamlined and stable. Customers choose from stuffed pita sandwiches and bowls with an option of rice, freekeh — an ancient Middle Eastern grain imported from Israel — and or salad as its base. As for proteins, options include chicken marinated in yogurt, lamb kebabs drizzled with amba and shrimp served with tzatziki, roasted red peppers and red cabbage.
Of course, you can also order shifka peppers at Shifka; served as a side dish ($2), they are imported from Israel. Other sides include french fries coated in zaatar ($8), as well as muhammara, a walnut and roasted red pepper spread, or matbucha, a roasted tomato and smoked paprika salad ($8 each). Alcoholic beverages and dessert — like creamy, nutty soft-serve ice cream made with Israeli tahini ($8) — are on offer, too.
Nathan said he and his partners considered using kosher meat but ultimately decided it was too costly. “Kosher is part of our heritage and history, but it’s not the only way,” he said. “What we do here is not traditional. I hope that people see it as a voice of our new generation of Jews all over the world.”
He added: “We’re going to do breakfast here at some point, and we will have bacon, egg and cheese bourekas and it’s phenomenal. And a shakshuka in a pita — that’s how we want to eat.”
The exterior of Shifka, an new Israeli pita sandwich shop at 324 Bowery. (Courtesy of Shifka)
More than “just” an Israeli restaurant, Nathan stresses that Shifka’s influences are far flung. “Obviously, I’m from Israel but the influences are from all around,” he said. “We have tzatziki in a pita. We have lamb kebab, a hybrid of Romanian kebab combined with Yemenite spices. It is not just Israeli.”
Nonetheless, Nathan said that Sami & Susu — which garnered a Michelin Bib Gourmand award in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — has been subject to some anti-Israel vandalism during the two-year war between Israel and Gaza.
“We got tagged a couple of times,” he said. “People sprayed on our window.”
And yet, Nathan and Anderson say that the war in Gaza impacted their business in an unexpectedly good way.
“It actually gave us more business I think,” Nathan said. “More Jews are coming to Sami & Susu after Oct. 7. Hipster couples from Fort Greene to Upper West Siders. Maybe they are looking for that kind of food — I call it Mediterranean because it is actually not meant to be just Israeli but food of the Diaspora.”
He added: “Israel, as much as I love it, is not the only heritage we have as Jews. We have a long history before the country existed.”
Since its opening three weeks ago, Shifka has garnered rave reviews. According to the Infatuation, “Shifka makes lunchtime in NOHO so much better,” while Grub Street named Shifka to its list of the city’s best new restaurants.
“Knock on wood, said Nathan. “We are fortunate to have a good beginning on this project.”
And like Chipotle — which is named for a smoked, dried jalapeno pepper and operates 3,700 restaurants around the globe — Nathan and his partners are hoping to scale Shifka one day. Unlike the fast-casual juggernaut, which is primarily owned by institutional investors, Shifka’s partners’ plans are more modest.
“We are looking for small growth, not duplicating it dozens of times. We are planning to expand Shifka and move Sami & Susu to a bigger location,” Nathan said. “We never prevent ourselves from dreaming big and maybe expanding to other cities.”
For now, though, the focus is on the Bowery location. On a recent morning, Shifka’s kitchen was abuzz as staffers busily filled dozens of lunch orders for local businesses. By lunchtime, “the whole place is packed,” Anderson said. “Delicious food, fair prices, creative. No fear about all the hate that is going around the city right now.”
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Dining and Cooking