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.