![]() ![]() ![]() In the back half of the space, they built a lab to try to figure out how to create a packaged hummus that would be shelf stable, but that would maintain the integrity of their recipe. We are both young parents and that’s a big piece of how we want to grow the business.”ĭuring the pandemic, the team shifted their model to work with World Central Kitchen where they prepared 100K free meals for the community. “It’s cool to watch that relationship scale and to support small farmers, and focus on the next generation, and making sure we are building a planet to leave to our kids. “We are able to keep all those acres going with regenerative farming practices,” said Nick. Now Casey is farming 500 acres of chickpeas exclusively for Little Sesame. Nick and Ronen met Casey back when they first started tinkering with hummus recipes in 2016, ordering 50 pound bags of chickpeas. The more chickpeas, the better the environment. They help build healthier soil that captures carbon, rather than releasing it into the air. ![]() The cool thing about chickpeas is that they are a high-protein, healthy, nitrogen-fixing plant that adds diversity to the crop rotation. The key to their operation was not just the recipe, but the relationship they built with Casey Bailey, a fourth generation regenerative organic farmer who works 5000 acres under the big sky in Fort Benton, Montana. After two years as a pop-up, they opened a brick and mortar Little Sesame, a fast casual restaurant in 2018. They got together and started testing recipes for hummus in the restaurant’s basement, digging into tahini sampling and the R&D for what would become the original hummus recipe for a pop up called Little Sesame. ![]() The pair reconvened after Nick had moved to DC to open his (super popular) restaurant DGS, a Jewish delicatessen. And the idea of doing something with that family meal hummus was still lingering in his mind. We connected over the same spirit of how we wanted to approach food,” Nick said. When Ronen moved on to Marea, the two kept in touch, bonding over a desire to break out of the parameters of classic fine dining. “He blew us all away with his hummus,” Nick told me. Ronen was a terrific line cook, but he became something of a legend for the homemade hummus he would serve at family meal. The company was founded in Washington, DC in 2016, in the basement of a Jewish deli, the creation of Nick Wiseman and Ronen Tenne, a pair of cooks who met working the line under Michael White at Alto in NYC. Which really makes the product that much more interesting, right? The people behind it. (Photo by Scott Suchman).īut friends, Little Sesame is not just great hummus, there’s quite a cool story behind it too. I am getting serious mom points.Ī stack of Little Sesame’s delicious freshly spun hummus. I send a pita and a half-pint to school with the kids for lunch weekly now. You can try the Classic, the Jammy Tomato, or the Caramelized Onion, but my favorite is the Herby Jalapeno it’s got a nice kick. Lemon juice is its only stabilizer and its added in just the right amount to bring up the flavor of the small list of ingredients. It’s rich and velvety, smooth and creamy, far more silken in texture than the airy fluffy sort you might be used to. It’s freshly spun in small batch hummus from organic regeneratively-farmed chickpeas. And my life improved, simply because now I can have amazing hummus any time I want it. Sure, I can find hummus on par with the shuk at places like Shukette, Laser Wolf, Taim, Edith’s, Reunion, Miriam, and many other wonderful Arab-Israeli restaurants around the city, but from the grocery store it was not as easy. I also came home with an understanding that much of the packaged hummus sold in our local groceries is, well, not so good. ![]()
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