Saba

Saba opened on Magazine Street in 2018 as Alon Shaya's modern Israeli restaurant and the flagship of Pomegranate Hospitality, the group he founded with his wife Emily in 2017. The name means grandfather in Hebrew. Shaya was born in Israel, raised in Philadelphia and is now a New Orleanian, and he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South in 2015 for his cooking at Domenica, before the restaurant that carried his own name took Best New Restaurant in 2016 — both awards predate Saba, which has its own 2025 Michelin Bib Gourmand. The signature is wood-fired pita baked steps from the table, and dinner runs Wednesday to Sunday with brunch from Friday.

One thing here needs stating plainly, because getting it wrong would matter. Saba is known for gazoz, the sparkling Israeli soda built on fruit and house syrups, and it would be reasonable to assume that is the zero-proof drink on the menu. It is not. Every gazoz on the current list is $18 and contains a spirit: strawberry lemon with bourbon, cucumber agave with tequila, pineapple shrub with white rum. Ask before ordering one. What is genuinely alcohol-free is smaller but real. Athletic Brewing's Upside Dawn is the only non-alcoholic beer at $6. The rest sits in a coffee and tea list that has clearly had thought put into it rather than being a default: Moroccan mint tea and a rotating seasonal herbal tea at $10 each, an iced halva latte at $8 that turns the restaurant's own sesame-sweet register into a drink, cold brew at $6 and a pot of coffee that serves two. For a meal built around bread, hummus and wood fire, tea at that level is a fair pairing and the halva latte is genuinely worth ordering. But this is a restaurant with an excellent kitchen and a thin zero-proof list, not a destination for the drinks — and the one drink it is famous for is not one of them.