Hello, Halloumi! Pistachio 2 Opens

Rahaf Sayet took two slices of blended whole wheat and sourdough bread from Whole G Bakery, layered on Cyprus-made cheese, and placed the sandwich in a panini press — crafting a local-foreign fusion meal that’s selling fast at a new Chapel Street Middle Eastern eatery. 

Sayet put together that sandwich at Pistachio 2, the new downtown outpost of a popular Westville cafe that is now welcoming kibbeh and cloth napkins to a riff on the original brunch and coffee place.

Internationally acclaimed artist and architect Mohamed Hafez, who founded Pistachio as a Syrian-led stop on Whalley Avenue back in 2020, formally opened that new pair of doors on the downtown edge of Dwight last week while building up a pandemic-born mission to revitalize human connection with Middle Eastern dishes and design.

The restaurant’s second space, located on the bottom floor of the Novella luxury apartment complex at 1256 Chapel St., boasts longer hours and more square feet and kitchen space than the 911 Whalley Ave. cafe. 

Within the next week, the new restaurant will bring not just brunch, coffees and pastries to Chapel Street diners, but also full-fledged family-style Syrian dinners. 

Hafez, who was born in Damascus and raised in Saudi Arabia before moving to the States, said the development of Pistachio is part of ​“a lifelong journey of finding and rediscovering home,” a means of reconstructing and remembering a Syrian childhood no longer accessible due to the ravages of war while connecting to a new sense of belonging in New Haven. 

Since opening his Whalley Avenue coffee shop in a move of hopeful resiliency at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hafez has managed to grow his business to another New Haven neighborhood in under three years. The new Chapel Street restaurant is open Sundays through Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“I’m genuinely in love with what he’s created here,” Pistachio 2 Manager Austin Byrd said of Hafez. Ten months ago, Byrd said he was working at Starbucks, as a ​“very much fake, fast food barista… I felt very disconnected.” At Pistachio, he said, there is room to experiment. He said his personal brew, ​“The Austin,” a long-shot of espresso with honey and lavender syrup, will soon be on the menu. 

On a recent visit to Pistachio 2, this Independent culinary correspondent got a tour of the fresh new space — and a lesson not on how to make ​“The Austin,” but rather on how to make one of the restaurant’s most popular meals, a pistachio halloumi panini.

Line cook Rahaf Sayet walked through how to make the simple but satisfying sumac-topped sandwich.

First, she grabbed two slices of a whole wheat-sourdough blended bread made by Whole G, a bakery with several New Haven outposts in Dwight, downtown and East Rock. Onto that bread went four slices of halloumi, a cheese from Cyprus made of both goat’s and sheep’s milk. Then a splash of crushed pistachios and sundried tomatoes, topped with the second slice of Whole G and put in a panini press. 

Once out of the griddle, Sayet sprinkled more pistachio over the panini along with a shake of sumac before plating the meal with a fresh tomato and a few leaves of basil. 

The simple addition of tomato and basil on the side provided a herbaceous bite to the intentionally mild take on a comfort food staple. The straightforward panini, packed with the acidic punch of sumac, is not just a solid lunch — but an indication of Hafez’s ability to mix high quality local and foreign ingredients to tell stories both universal and specific.

In addition to growing community connection, another primary goal behind Pistachio’s establishment is to broaden New Haven’s culinary scene. ​“We wanted to provide a beautiful brunch menu that had a very Syrianesque flavor but still caters to an American breakfast demand,” Hafez said. ​“Syrian dishes are very complex and take a lot of time to prepare. We wanted to reinvent them in a way that goes with a faster paced brunch-lunch experience — while giving a very authentic experience.” 

Part of that authenticity, Hafez argued, is opting to buy expensive ingredients like halloumi in the first place — without overcharging for the sandwich itself. (The panini costs $13 dollars and is laden with about six thick slices of the cheese). ​“We’re not making any money off that sandwich,” Hafez said. ​“But the customer will be very happy when they have the experience of eating it — and they’ll buy something else.”

“It’s never about how to make maximum profit with the cheapest ingredients,” Hafez continued, stating that another reason he was driven to open Pistachio was disillusionment with a restaurant industry concerned with profiting off diners rather than joining in a communal experience of ​“cherishing a moment” with neighbors.

While Hafez works with a team of professional bakers and chefs to develop recipes that draw from cultures all over the Middle East, his primary training and expertise lies in architecture and art.

Imagining and constructing the spaces in which his two restaurants operate, he said, is his main ​“cup of tea.”

When he moved into the Whalley Avenue location, ​“it was really a shell of a space,” he said. ​“We had to finish the floors, there were no ceilings, nothing. Everything your eye sees, I built.”

In addition to making the move to invite more New Haveners — largely including, he said, Yale faculty and students — to visit Pistachio without having to commute to Westville, the larger downtown location has increased his staff’s capacity to experiment with and produce more dishes while Hafez has had the opportunity to craft a whole new space aiming to give customers the too-often crushed craving for connection.

“We’re all longing for more human interaction,” he said. ​“I’ll be the first one to bring out my phone — we’re all guilty,” he said, of losing the present moment to abundant distractions.

He said that in addition to providing a unique coffee shop and co-working environment on one side of the restaurant, the other half is strictly laptop free and meant for engagement, conversation, and mutual enjoyment of good food. 

“We’re trying to protect the customer’s experience,” he said. Designing a special space where people are ​“gently reminded” to focus on the moment, one that is unique and memorable, is a gift he hopes to give to those following losses he has experienced in his own life.

Hafez’s move to the United States and ensuing disconnect from family and a sense of home during the ongoing and annihilative Syrian Civil War has been well documented. Watch a New Yorker documentary here that explores how Hafez’s artwork uses found objects and scrap materials to visually reconstruct memories of a broken and distant home.

“You have to cherish what you have, cherish this dining experience so that it will last,” he said. ​“It didn’t last for me. So I’m trying to bring attention to that kind of thing.”

Recalling his childhood, he said, is an ​“all-consuming” past time — when he thinks of Syria, he remembers sitting in the kitchen with his mom, watching her make the countertop kibbeh he plans to serve to guests who come through for Pistachio’s upcoming dinner hours.

Making kibbeh, ​“a very delicate and homemade dish,” he said, would involve making a series of ​“round shells stuffed with lamb and nuts.” 

“It can be made in so many ways,” he said — the kibbeh balls can be deep fried or cooked with yogurt or grilled or cooked in the oven.

He said he is looking forward to setting tables with cloth napkins and silverware to invite New Haveners into a Middle Eastern fine dining experience — one that is personalized each night according to the dietary restrictions of those arriving for a meal and that surprises the consumer with food that is prepared spontaneously according to the feeling a chef wants to evoke that night. One night the kibbeh might be grilled, another night fried, he suggested. ​“That’s the idea.”

Hafez opened his first cafe on Whalley Avenue, right underneath his art studio, in March of 2020, in what he described as a pandemic-prompted move of faith. ​“Sometimes there are decisions in life that don’t make sense,” he said, acknowledging the underlying risks of attempting to begin a business in the midst of a social and economic shutdown. ​“I believed in my intuition and the neighborhood I’m investing in — and I had a belief that the pandemic is gonna go away eventually,” he said, adding that in that moment of global and national crisis, he knew that believing in reconciliation and recovery was the only thing that could ​“keep me going.”

“I had the belief that the amazing fabric of Westville is gonna prevail. And even when we were all masked, the neighborhood did show up.”

That moment, he said, is when he discovered the ​“recipe” to business and to life. ​“You invest in human connections,” he said, ​“and those people will show up and support you.”