Danbury’s Sesame Seed embraces its new normal
Heather Roles knows that people want to come back to dine in person at Sesame Seed.
Regulars used to linger in the restaurant for hours, surrounded by vintage collectibles and decor while they ate hummus, baba ghanoush and dinners like Raviolette Oswaldo and Chicken Georgie Bush.
Since the pandemic, though, the manager said doing takeout is how the restaurant can stay in business, with food and labor costs higher than ever. She said that true regulars are understanding and that she hopes to maybe start opening for private events. But some guests have been impatient with the move to takeout-only that has lasted four years now.
“I wish people would meet us in the middle,” she said. “It’s like they forgot there was a pandemic.”
Sesame Seed has been a fixture on West Wooster Street in Danbury since it opened in the Victorian-style home in 1977. Its interior is lined with shelves that display books, toys, ceramics and photos.
Owner Dimitri Chaber said he collects these items at tag sales, and Roles said that some have been moved to the restaurant’s upper floors over the years. Twinkle lights illuminate the front porch at night, and in warm months, the green and red exterior is accented by lush flowers and greenery.
The menu can be loosely described as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. Falafel, shawarma, kibbe and kofta are all on the menu, as well as a variety of chicken, fish and pasta dishes, like the miniature ravioli, or raviolette.
“Everything is fresh,” Roles said. “I can’t chop the tomatoes today (on Tuesday) to serve them Friday. It has to be done fresh.”
Roles said that people don’t think of the food as healthy because it’s “gooey,” but that Chaber focuses on scratchcooking with high-quality ingredients. Chaber said that he’s largely a self-trained cook.
“My aunts taught me some stuff, a lot of the Arab dishes,” he said, noting that his sisters also helped him along the way.
The Chicken Georgie Bush, Roles explained, was named after former-President George H.W. Bush’s disdain for a vegetable. According to Slate, Bush banned broccoli from Air Force One. Chaber named a chicken-and-broccoli dish after the affair. He’s since added the “electrifying and daring”
Chicken Elon Musk, with mushrooms and leeks in a cream sauce.
In addition to creating and naming new menu items,
Chaber is also responsible for collecting most of the items that line Sesame Seed’s walls and shelves.
But it’s Roles, who worked as a server when the restaurant was doing in-person dining and now answers the phone and hands off the takeout orders, who guests of the restaurant are likely to encounter.
Looking for a job she could walk to, Roles found Sesame Seed.
“I got fired, like, six times,” she said, because she would leave the restaurant to tour with the Grateful Dead.
When she had her son, now 22, Roles said she promised Chaber that she would stick around until he was grown up, and he took her back. She said she never imagined she’d still be there more than 30 years later. It’s customers and Chaber who keep her around, she said.
“He works so hard,” she said. “And he let me bring my kid to work. He lets people bring their kids to work when they don’t have child care.”
Roles said that she’s seen regulars’ kids grow up and become customers, and regulars have seen her son grow up, too. Now that he’s an adult she could go back on the road if she wanted to — she has other priorities now, like learning Chaber’s recipes.
“He never measures anything, but it tastes the same every time,” she said. “He won’t show anyone how to do anything ... but during the pandemic, he had to show me.”
Another project on Roles’s mind is making a vegan option for every dish on the menu. But in the meantime, she’s focused on keeping everyone happy and fed.
“(The regulars) still come in,” she said. “They get their dinner on Wednesday night, or whatever, and I remember their favorite desserts.”