Eat around Los Angeles long enough, and you’d unlikely be surprised by a concept that merges Mediterranean influences with Mexican cooking. We can count at least five places serving falafel tacos in town and see our sidewalks filling up with nearly as many shawarma stands and smoky kebabs as we do taco trucks these days.
Still, Nikki Abeskharoun, who runs Almaya in Lincoln Heights with her mother, Blanca Gonzalez, and partner, Joseph Doubleday, continues to see customers looking confused as they take in their Mediterranean-meets-Mexican menu, a month after opening the restaurant.
“People are like, why are there kabob and burritos on the same menu?” Nikki tells L.A. TACO. "Having that reception, it's just like, ‘let me break it down for you.’"
Almaya, which Abeskharoun understands means “from the water” in Arabic and “a gift from God’s love” in Hebrew, serves a tight selection of dishes, both geographically distinct and fused, in the way we’ve naturally come to eat in diverse cities like L.A.
It’s the way Nikki grew up herself in Mar Vista. The daughter of an Egyptian father and mother from Mexico City, having guacamole and salsa with your kebabs, or stuffing Thanksgiving turkey with bulgur wheat and freekeh, were natural couplings.
“I grew up with the privilege of having both of them in the same household,” Nikki says. "We're a mixed family… growing up, we had it showcased in the house all the time."
At Almaya, which anchors a food court in one of the two towering pillars of gentrification standing shoulder-to-shoulder on Barranca Street, you can make your breakfast out of a straightforward plate of shakshuka , chilaquiles, or machaca.
Or opt for a breakfast burrito made with fluffy eggs, fried potato fritters, and halal beef bacon and beef chorizo, topped with a creamy jalapeno salsa, impeccable chile de árbol salsa roja with notes of cumin, or herby tahini-cilantro dip; a formidable trio of flavor-packed salsas our team agrees are some of the best we’ve had in recent memory.
Blanca, who does all the cooking, has been preparing Mediterranean food for years–and Mexican food for longer, in her 35 years of professional cooking. She’s always been a great cook, Nikki says, as the youngest of ten kids who did a lot of the cooking back in Mexico and learning at her great-grandmother’s side.
After coming to the States and meeting Nikki’s dad, she eventually began dabbling in Mediterranean cooking, sometime around 15 to 20 years ago.
”Finding inspiration in the difference of cuisines and seeing the similarities as well,” Nikki says. “She kind of just tied them together.”
In Los Angeles, Blanca worked at Mid-City’s longstanding, hookah-strapped restaurant Almaza, where Joseph was also working. Nikki met him while coming by and hanging out where her mother worked. Later, Blanca helped open La Esquina across the street, designing and executing its Mexican menu. The trio worked together at SaMoHi-stalwart Pita House in Santa Monica next, where Nikki was a server.
Almaya was spurred by Joseph, who grew up in nearby Highland Park, and his desire to bring “healthy, traditional” cuisine to northeast L.A. Blanca, and pushed each other to make it a reality.
The concept opened just last month, on January 10, and is steadily seeing repeat customers who live and work in the neighborhood, even those initially befuddled by the fused menu.
L.A. TACO’s team went to Almaya on a recent “Taco Tuesday,” on the recommendation of our colleague, Lexis-Olivier Ray, who raved about the flavorful and filling lentil soup he paired with hummus and lightly fried pita while cycling through the neighborhood.
Javier Cabral, L.A. TACO's Editor, was overjoyed that his salmon kebobs were not overcooked and flaked perfectly. A rarity in L.A.'s fish kebob kingdom that favors char over the delicate texture of fish.
Burritos, beautifully balanced with chicken shawarma, falafel, and asada kebab, and just the right proportions of beans and rice, all received enthusiastic thumbs-ups and even some eyes rolling back in heads. Orders were served with house-pickled, swollen jalapenos, carrots, and purple-stained turnips, along with strawberry-lime, mango lemonade, horchata, and jamaica, from two glass hives of daily changing, fresh aguas frescas.
The Taco Tuesday special that day included tacos with falafel, chicken shawarma, and Baja-style battered Dover sole with that cilantro-tahini sauce instead of a chipotle crema. We enjoyed all three, but the tender shawarma, thinly shaved off a trompo but spiced like al pastor and served with pickled red onions, was my favorite. Nikki says the latter dish made for an ideal way of having a Halal version of pastor.
Another day, I went crazy for this simple breakfast burrito, served hot in a toasted flour tortilla, with crispy beef bacon, cheese, and soft scrambled eggs. A big fan of Blanca’s smoky salsa roja, I couldn't resist smearing everything with the equally luscious, thick jalapeno cream that is good enough to eat with a spoon.
Despite Nikki’s Egyptian heritage, the restaurant’s influences tend to be more Lebanese, Syrian, and Greek than Maghrebi. Dishes are kept simple and rich with healthy vegetables. Falafel is light and crunchy, served on a bed of kale and made complete with Blanca’s silky tahini. Their chorizo and chicken sausage are both at the restaurant to adhere to Halal standards. A side of labneh, tzatziki, hummus, or guacamole is always available. Corn tortillas are made by hand with masa from Sylmar’s Graciana, where their flour tortillas are also sourced.
She sees a throughline in the two cuisines in their “heavy use of spices,” including a lot of lime, parsley, cilantro, and fresh vegetables. All conducive to their mission of “bringing the community together.”
Almaya’s specials change daily, usually with a soup of the day, with such varied selections as lentil or meatball, and Tuesday’s tacos shift weekly to include recipes like tinga, calabacitas, and quesabirrias.
Good fusion is about knowing when to ease on the brakes, considerably more than just throwing creative amalgamations at the wall, as anyone who remembers the novelty taco craze of the early 2010s can attest.
“I think breakfast items like shakshuka, it's hard to kind of make it more Latino. Same with, like, chilaquiles,” she says. “You want to keep it simple but still not make it like a joke.”
At Almaya, Nikki’s cross-cultural upbringing fuses organically into a menu that gives you options both Mediterranean, Mexican, and Mexi-Terranean without feeling like a strain on anyone’s imagination or standards of verity. This is good, healthy, clean food that absolutely explodes with flavor, its adherence to its influences all letter-perfect, whether you’re coming in for salmon kebab, chicken shawarma burrito, tabbouleh salad, plate of birria de res, or Nikki’s favorite dish of chicken kebab in a spicy cream sauce.
This extends to the warm hospitality and, yay, dessert, which includes short, sticky, walnut-crumble-encrusted baklava, rice pudding, and indulgent creme caramel.
We remember when the building where Almaya now stands was once a ramshackle compound of houses, formerly belonging to a semi-prominent wrought-iron sculptor, where anarchic parties rang through the night. Eyed suspiciously by neighbors in the tower of condos beside it, it was sold off to developers to become “Barranca L.A.,” the luxury apartment complex where Almaya is located.
Nikki and her team eventually hope to move into a brick-and-mortar space of their own in the future. Given their experience in hospitality, it would make sense to run their own show outside of the food hall they currently occupy.
“We would love to be more personable with people instead of just giving them their food and calling it a day,” she says. “We've always loved that. It's more interaction with the public.”
Still, they’re quite happy connecting with local Lincoln Heights residents and people passing through while on the job right now, especially seeing the same faces return for another bite. Something L.A. TACO plans to do more in the next few weeks to explore its wide-ranging, though tightly edited, menu of great cooking.
“Okay, I’ll be back tomorrow morning for that shakshuka,” we witnessed a Metro worker hollering to Nikki on a recent afternoon after she’d just piled praise on the lunch she’d just had.
“She actually gave us those flowers that we have in the front,” Nikki says. “She's a very nice person. I feel like the biggest surprise is just seeing how much the community said that they've been wanting something like this in the area.”
Almaya ~ 2020 Barranca St. Ste. C Los Angeles, CA 90031
