Eli and Max Sussman Want to 'Scale Up' Their Middle Eastern Restaurant

The Sussman brothers' promised that their residency at Threes Brewing, which finishes tonight, would give diners a preview of the Middle Eastern restaurant concept they are working on. Today they drop a few new details about that restaurant in an interview with Food Republic. First off, it looks like it will land on the Lower East Side with a name that sounds "like sesame," says Eli. The menu will be fairly small, with six core items and a few specials. Two of those menu items are locked: "The chicken shawarma is ready for prime time," says Eli, and so is a sweet potato topped with a spicy Yemenite sauce called zhug that he served at Mile End.

Perhaps the biggest news is that the brothers want the restaurant to be scalable. "Max and I are really looking at it as a business...We want it to be a thriving, functional business, not a vanity project. This is a project that we want to scale up so that we could potentially..." says Eli trailing off. "We could put out a bunch of food that's really good, but not necessarily have to be in the kitchen 19 hours a day for the next ten years." Jeff Jetton, who's invested in a few D.C. restaurants is behind them and, so far, there are no chef driven Middle Eastern chains, so the team might be out to conquer that sector of the growing fast-casual market.