About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Little Sesame opened two locations around downtown DC with a certain customer base in mind: office workers who’d line up for the fast-casual restaurant’s creamy hummus bowls topped with seasonal vegetables and warm, homemade pita. And until the pandemic, they did. Now that the demographic is mostly working from home, the owners are experimenting with something, and someplace, new: a long-term Little Sesame pop-up at Sugar Fox in Chevy Chase DC specializing in shawarma rotisserie meals. It launches January 6 and will run through March 14.
Co-owner Nick Wiseman isn’t new to the neighborhood himself—he grew up there and went to nearby Wilson High School, and is a friend of Little Red Fox owners Matt and Jena Carr.
The pop-up menu is geared toward the many families in the area. Customers can pick between shawarma-spiced, spit-roasted rotisserie chickens (raised humanely without hormones or antibiotics) or marinated, spiced cauliflower. The entrees come in whole or half portions, or can be ordered as part of family-style meals for two-or-four with sauces, sides like rotisserie potatoes with chicken drippings or maple-roasted carrots, and a half pint of Little Sesame hummus.
Patrons can also stock their fridges with pints of hummus, packages of pita, homemade pickles, natural wines, and beers. Middle Eastern-inspired desserts come courtesy of Sugar Fox, whose ice cream counter is in hibernation for winter.
Wiseman says he’s testing out the pop-up with an eye towards making the rotisserie concept more permanent down the line—likely in a residential area like Chevy Chase.
“Neighborhoods have a lot of vibrancy right now. It goes through cycles. For a long time everyone went downtown to eat,” says Wiseman. “We’re trying to do the same things we do, but re-shift what we do and who we do it for.”
The pop-up will be open for takeout and in-house delivery.
Little Sesame at Sugar Fox. Opening January 6 through March 14.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
