When a customer walks in the door, he smiles and immediately throws some meat on the grill. He needs no other prompting as he adds spices and oil, then finishes up. He wraps the sandwich in paper and then fist bumps the customer as he asks about last night’s basketball game and hands him his sandwich.
“It’s like baseball,” Muhammad Ali, head chef at Sahara Deli said pretending to pull down a baseball cap. “A regular customer nods and I know exactly what he wants.”
Sahara Deli, located at the Grab-and-Go Gas Station on the corner of Fayette Street and Highway 99, has been open for the last eight weeks. The deli serves Mediterranean food and cold cuts during lunch time hours. All the food is prepared from scratch at the deli by Ali.
Ali Altom, Ali’s cousin, is the manager of Grab-and-Go. He printed 2,500 menus and passed them out to offices, customers at the gas station, and around town. Since then, he said that there has been a steady flow of customers and an increase in sales.
“It’s different. Everything around here is fried, like pizza and things like that,” Altom said.
Ali said that the most common food sold is shawarma, a meat pita cut from shavings off a block of meat, heated on a rotating spit. This is followed closely by hummus, a dip made from mashed chickpeas mixed with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and garlic.
Ali prefers to make Gyros, meat served in a pita, and hummus. Choosing a favorite dish was difficult, though, as he said that he simply enjoys cooking.
“It feels good to cook,” he said. “You look at what you make, and it looks good. Then it sells and you feel good.”
The gas station sells almost everything – car parts, cigarettes, snacks, even earrings. The idea for the deli, however, has its origins in New York City.
Ali and Altom grew up in the Bronx where Ali’s father owned a candy shop. There, Ali first learned that he had a passion for cooking. He said he learned half of his skills from his mother, and the other half from LaGuardia Community College, where he attended culinary school.
The family lived in New York City for 12 years, where they also operated a grocery store with a deli inside. Then they moved and worked in Fort Wayne, Ind. They bought the gas station and moved to Hillsdale, Mich. in January of 2012.
Ali and Altom live for their customers. When people walk in, often they know them personally.
“Everytime I stop by, they’ll ask me how the food was and if I liked it,” said Junior Jill Carney. “They seem very customer-oriented and always provide options with regard to spices and sauces.”
Posters with pictures of Hillsdale from different decades hang on the walls of Grab-and-Go. Both men said that the people of Hillsdale have eased their transition from New York to Michigan.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Ali said. “The people are respectful and the neighborhood is nice.”
Sahara Deli is the only Mediterranean restaurant in Hillsdale. Altom said that some customers have eaten Arabic food in Detroit and “are happy that we have it here.” Others, however, try Mediterranean food for the first time at Sahara.
“As soon as they taste it, they like it,” he said.
Juniors Matt Payne and Lou Cangelosi regularly visit Sahara. They found out about the opening of the deli from the ads at the gas station. They come for lunch a couple of times a week, “at least,” Payne added.
“It’s right down the corner from my house and is an easy walk,” Cangelosi said. “And it’s delicious.”
They regularly order the Reuban sandwhich and the chicken shawarma, which neither had eaten before coming to the deli.
Carney only recently discovered Sahara. She joined one of her Chi Omega Fraternity sisters in getting lunch there right before Spring Break. Carney has enjoyed Mediterranean food her whole life and especially enjoys the chicken shawarma from Sahara.
“Just thinking about it makes me want to go again,” she said. “It’s sort of dinner time now, right?”
Ali sees himself working for the deli for the foreseeable future. He likes his ability to run the kitchen himself and the simplicity of Sahara.
“This is what I wanted,” he said. “Good food that brings in good people.”