There will be roasted lamb and falafel, there will be pita and of course there will be hummus.
There will be familiar facets from the Uptown restaurant Saba at the next restaurant from Emily and Alon Shaya and their Pomegranate Hospitality company. But this new concept, now taking shape in Lakeview, has a different approach and is aiming to open many different access points.
Safta’s Table will be a more casual restaurant, an all-day café, or as the chef Alon Shaya puts it “neighborhood Mediterranean.”
Hummus at Saba in New Orleans, where the wood-fired oven turns out puffy, hot pita bread.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
Safta’s Table will be at 129 Allen Toussaint Blvd., near the lakefront, in a new mix-used building that’s part of the West Lake Shore Shopping Center. It’s slated to open in the fall.
An all-day cafe
It will serve from breakfast through dinner, with weekend brunch, so people could come by for morning coffee, a quick lunch, or fill a table with shared dishes, wine and cocktails.
The restaurant will be home base for catering, and also have a retail section with grab-and-go packaged items like hummus and salads, and dishes to heat up at home, like lasagnas, pot pies and casseroles.
Though more casual than the upscale Saba, Safta’s Table draws on the same roots.
Emily Shaya with Pomegranate Hospitality at the New Orleans restaurant Saba, where portraits of chef Alon Shaya’s grandfather are on display by the front door. Saba is Hebrew for grandfather.
Advocate photo by Shawn Fink
Saba means grandfather in Hebrew, while Safta means grandmother. The Shayas have a restaurant called Safta in Denver. In 2024, they ran a residency at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel called Safta 1964, a playful re-imagining of the Denver restaurant. That inspired new ways to think about the concept which evolved into Safta’s Table, Shaya explained.
The inspiration remains his own grandmother, the late Matilda Gerassi, and dishes that she once cooked for him are central to the menu.
“It’s beautiful food inspired by her recipes, cooked with love,” Shaya said. “I hope it’s a place people will feel really good coming to, family-friendly, neighborhood oriented. We want to fit the food into people’s everyday lives.”
The restaurant will use a counter service, deli-style format, and the menu will have composed dishes and options to build your own plate from a mix-and-match array of salads and sides, meats, fish, and vegetables.
There will be some connection to dishes served at Saba and Safta in Denver, though the new restaurant will take in a broader range of Mediterranean flavors. Influences from Greece, Morocco and Italy are all on the table, the chef said.
Both Saba and Safta opened in 2018 as similar concepts with distinct personalities.
“They’re just like an old married couple that have been together long enough where they share the same mannerism and traits, but still very much have their own approach,” Shaya said.
Pomegranate Hospitality is also expanding in Denver. This spring, it is set to open Ceci! Italian Lounge, with small plates and Italian cocktails in the Mile High City’s the Source Hotel, which is also home to Safta restaurant. Ceci, Italian for chickpea, is also the name of the Shayas’ long-haired dachshund.
Pomegranate Hospitality also developed the restaurant Miss River and Chandelier Bar with Four Seasons hotel inside the luxury riverfront property in New Orleans, and last year it opened the restaurant Silan in the Bahamas at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort.