Last year, Little Sesame introduced an ordering app to help cut down on the stress of lines.Ĭounting Little Sesame’s first life inside the former DGS Delicatessen, Wiseman says the hummus shop spent three years building a following in Dupont before branching out, and he expects to continue that patient approach in Chinatown. The breezy feel - and the cranked-up Israeli tunes - are intended to help diners take a mental break from the workday. Muted pink and turquoise tiles, wooden stump stools, and an abundance of potted plants are all part of an Edit Lab design. Rey Lopez/Eater D.C.Īlthough the seating area is narrower than the Dupont shop, Little Sesame’s new outpost will feel very familiar to fans. Little Sesame tops hummus bowls with garnishes and house-made condiments. Nick Wiseman tells Eater he and fellow chef-partner Ronen Tenne have plans to introduce burekas, savory stuffed pastries that have gained popularity as a late-night food in Israel, at the Chinatown shop. There are also sides of salatim and two flavors of soft serve (vanilla tahini, Turkish coffee) that come topped with cocoa nib, halva dust, or a sweet sesame crumble. He and his cousin Dave Wiseman also own Hill Prince on H Street NE and Whaley’s in Navy Yard.įor opening day, Little Sesame’s Chinatown counter will serve its seasonal winter menu, with highlights such as a winter squash hummus bowl - livened up with pomegranate molasses and crispy chickpeas - and a roasted eggplant pita with zhug, tahini, and pickled red cabbage. Co-owner Nick Wiseman tells Eater that Little Sesame is still waiting on its liquor license. It also plans to eventually roll out two more firsts for the brand: weekend hours and beer and wine service.

on weekdays, two hours later than the Dupont store. The location near Capital One Arena, however, will stay open from 11 a.m. The new location ( 736 Sixth Street NW) will follow the example of the original standalone store, which opened near the end of August last year in Dupont Circle, with a similar look and an identical menu of veggie-heavy, Israeli-style dishes. We feel really grateful to count you all in our corner.Little Sesame has officially doubled down on D.C.’s taste for tahini, opening a second shop today that brings its hit hummus bowls, pita sandwiches, and dairy-free soft serve to Chinatown. We can’t thank you enough for all of your support over the years. Though we’re sad to say bye to this shop, it gives us a chance to push the envelope and to bring back the spirit of the basement days where we first started. This Thursday, August 25th will be the last day at our Chinatown location. We are consolidating restaurant operations to our Golden Triangle shop, which will become a hub for our community, our test kitchen, and our flagship. We just started a major partnership with sweetgreen, and will have a lot more exciting things to share over the coming year! We’re in Whole Foods, MOM’s Organic Market, and Foxtrot. Fast forward to now: we’re in over 150 stores, up and down the mid-Atlantic. In early 2022, we moved production out of our shops and built a factory dedicated to hummus. For nearly a year we made the hummus in our shops, a careful choreography of thousands of pounds of hummus a week, around the daily hustle of operating a restaurant. In June 2021, Whole Foods Markets started to sell our hummus – and we couldn't keep the product on the shelf. But we found friends willing to help us and we chipped away to figure it out.

We are restaurant people, with little experience in consumer packaged goods. At the same time, we knew we had to shift how we reached our customers so we built a food lab inside our restaurant and prepared our hummus for grocery store shelves. Along the way, we did our best to serve our community, providing nearly 100,000 free meals across the city. We’ve pivoted a million and one times to keep up with the changing landscape. Our restaurants were positioned at ground zero of the pandemic, serving downtown office workers, and our business evaporated overnight.

Little sesame menu