THE PITA PRINCIPAL
The long-running Sababa Restaurant thrives by making 2,500 pitas each day and 12,000 falafel balls per week. David Silverberg grabs a bite
It’s been almost 25 years since I last tasted the falafel sandwich at Sababa Restaurant, a mecca for Middle Eastern food and groceries at 390 Steeles Ave. W. I went to high school around the corner, and Sababa’s savoury pita sandwiches were as commonplace to me as pager pings on my hip.
Now, sitting inside the 35-yearold restaurant with owner Sam Azar and his son Nabil, I’m brought back to my North York childhood where creamy hummus, silkysmooth tzatziki and addictive falafel became the comfort food I sought outside my Jewish home. It is as delicious and filling as I remember.
But now I’m also sampling some of the items I didn’t think of trying when I was 18, such as fried halloumi cheese, Moroccan beef cigars, beef shawarma and kubbeh, an appetizer made from cracked wheat and stuffed with ground meat, onions, pine nuts and spices.
“We’re all about consistency,” Sam, 70, says in his Israeli accent, having grown up in Ramla, just south of Tel Aviv. “Customers tell me what they order today tastes exactly like what they ordered four years ago.”
That commitment to quality means many customers visit daily. “No exaggeration,” says Nabil, 41. “There’s a guy named Dan who orders a lamb shish kebab sandwich every day, grabs a Bamba snack and a Coke. He calls in 10 minutes prior to place his order so he doesn’t have to wait, and when we call out the order to the kitchen, we always say, ‘I need a lamb for Dan.’ ”
Bamba, puffed corn flavoured with peanut butter, is a key facet of the Sababa experience. It’s one of hundreds of imports from Israel that the Azars stock in a grocery section.
The shelves are filled with orangechocolate scented shampoo, honey cookies, four different types of halva, malted beer and pickled mango sauce. Sam says he decided to launch a grocery store three years after establishing the restaurant, “because no one had done it before.” He pauses, smiling. “And some Israelis who move to Toronto even asked me to get those cotton swabs from Israel for their ears. Come on, that’s too much. Israelis living here always want products that remind them of home.”
What isn’t too much for Sam is the very active restaurant business. When he arrived in North York in 1975 at 23, fresh from working at his parents’ restaurant in Ramla, he got busy launching his own Middle Eastern eateries. First came Jerusalem Delicatessen near Bathurst and Eglinton, which lasted five years. He then opened Jerusalem Restaurant in 1983 in the Yonge and Steeles area, which lasted four.
“These restaurants were pretty successful, but my dream was always to have a bakery as well, to make my own fresh pita,” Sam says, “and I wanted a change.”
He opened Sababa in 1987, and it didn’t take long for Sam to realize this new venture would be a hit. “I made food that tasted like back home in Israel and that appealed to a lot of people here,” he says, adding that customers come from as far as Hamilton to pick up his Israeli imports.
It’s no surprise, then, to learn the restaurant’s name is Hebrew for “wonderful.”
Sam is clearly passionate about his job, laughing often as we discuss the appeal of running a busy restaurant-bakery-grocery. “I love being my own boss,” he says. “And I always enjoy working with the public, interacting with customers.”
In the early days, his wife, Janet, often helped behind the counter, and his sons Nabil and Alex became managers when they grew up.
Today, Sababa’s 30 staffers are busy making about 12,000 falafel balls and 300 pounds of humus every week. They bake 2,500 pitas daily, but not just for the restaurant and takeout orders: they also sell to Meron in Thornhill, Limon on Queen East and the Haifa Room on Ossington, among others, and supply Canadian airlines with pitas through CLS Catering Services.
Since family businesses rely both on loyal customers and new fans to remain relevant, I ask Nabil how Sababa markets itself?
“We have fun campaigns,” he says, adding that the week after the Raptors won the championship in 2019, Sababa offered free falafel sandwiches for a day. “We promoted it a lot on social media and with a big sign outside the plaza here. We had a line around the block, and we gave away 1,500 sandwiches that day. One guy saw the line and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ He then said, ‘What’s a falafel?’ It was pretty cool that his first-ever falafel was from Sababa.”
We’re all about consistency. Customers tell me what they order today tastes exactly like what they ordered four years ago.
SAM AZAR