Z&Z Looks Back At 2021

Hellloooooo there friends & family, though most of you are one and the same.

We’re writing to you at the end of what has been one heck of a year. Needless to say, 2021 was challenging in many ways, but we hope that you were able to find meaning in the small moments. For us, that meant reveling in the milestone of Z&Z’s 5th birthday back in April of this year. Every day feels like the first day for us, and we’re still pinching ourselves that our little family tent has branched out into what it is today.

April also marked a return to one of our farmers markets after a whole year off during the start of the pandemic. We came back to the Mosaic District, to the unexpected surprise of seeing more and more of you show up every single week. It was truly incredible to see so many people in line for our manoushe every Sunday morning. Getting to interact with you all again was the highlight of our weeks, even if it meant getting up at 4am to start getting ready. You can check out a day-in-the-life of what a market day looks like for us in this video.

Thanks in large part to all of your manoushe cravings and amazing support, the buzz really started to build around our ‘lil saj show. We soon began getting noticed by big local press outlets in D.C. Most notably, Eater DC put out this amazing write up of us, which helped lead to even longer lines and more new friends. In May, our wonderful friend and longtime fan, Brittany aka @toastedtable, wrote about us in Bon Appetit, making the very bold claim that she likes our za’atar better than her own teta’s! Now, we’re not going to get involved in inter-generational beef with all of your tetas, but this was the highest praise we could have asked for.

The wheels kept whirling on the ‘ole Z&Z train after this, when we went against all of our parent’s advice and made the totally rational decision to open a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic. What can we say, what Z&Z really stands for is that we zig when others zag. But, we weren’t going to open just any old place - true to how we do everything else, it had to be special. And for us, there was no more special way to do it than to open our very first location in the same exact spot our grandfather opened his first restaurant after immigrating to the U.S. We were even able to do the impossible and keep the restaurant purchase a secret from our family so that we could surprise them with the news in this very emotional video (grab the tissues if you’re prone to crying in the club like our good friend Feed The Malik).

We were even able to do the impossible and keep the restaurant purchase a secret from our family so that we could surprise them with the news in this very emotional video (grab the tissues if you’re prone to crying in the club like our good friend Feed The Malik). Our opening got the attention of a lot of local press, and we were fortunate enough to be included in write ups from Eater, The Washingtonian, and The National News amongst many others! We’re super appreciative of all the publications, food pages, and blogs that came by to visit, spotlight, and support us.

To welcome ourselves to the neighborhood, we threw a huge 80’s-themed Block Party, in honor of our grandfather’s restaurant opening in the 80’s, which turned out to be a greater success than we could have imagined. With wonderful jams provided by DJ Tonia, we had lines of people partying down the block all night long. It was more special than we can put into words to have seen so many new and familiar faces come out and support us. We had such a fun time hanging out with, and serving, all of you.

While we were hard at work with our first shop, we had more big news to share. In our quest to get the best quality versions of our favorite Middle Eastern flavors out there, we were very excited to announce that Whole Foods had expanded the sales of our za’atar and sumac to their entire Mid-Atlantic Region. You can take a look at our jars’ journey to your local shelves here.

In the winter, we announced our newest product, an amazingly delicious Aleppo Pepper straight from Syria. We also put together our first-ever gift box of the finest Middle Eastern Spices you can get. So many of you were great gift givers and sent this big box of flavor to your friends, family, and secret Santa partners. 

While we know this year was incredibly difficult for so many people, we are counting our blessings for getting to do what we love with people who make it so much fun. We’re grateful for another year of getting to grow this big Z&Z family, and are really excited to create a lot more fun like our Arab Grandma’s Try Trader Joe’s Za’atar video that went viral on what our Baba calls “Tik Tak” (spoiler alert: it did not go well for TJ’s). If you aren’t already, please hit the “like” and “subscribe” on our Youtube channel while you’re there so you don’t miss out on all of the hot #content we’ll be putting out in the new year.

As always, none of this would be possible without the literal village of people supporting us inside and outside of the tent. We will always be so thankful for our community and the little corner of the internet we’ve all built together. Can’t wait to see you all at the shop soon.

Wishing you all a healthy, happy, and manoushe-filled new year! 

Love,

The Z&Z family