When Ali Sabbah first opened a restaurant, he didn’t know much about the industry. But after 25 years, Sabbah and his Salt Lake City-based restaurant Mazza are still delighting customers in the Salt Lake City area with Lebanese fare.
“You feel that you’re fulfilling a certain role within our community, and that’s a very satisfying feeling,” Sabbah told me about how it feels to be a staple in the Utah community for more than two decades.
Becoming an award-winning chef
It’s a long way away from when Sabbah first started cooking and trying out new recipes in his college apartment at Utah State University.
“I got hooked. I was fascinated with the process,” Sabbah said. “I loved to see what happens when you put ingredients together.”
Because he was new to cooking, he made some missteps along the way.
“Obviously, because I had no solid background in training how to cook, I made some disasters — concoctions and some weird stuff that my roommates and my friends had to suffer through telling me how lovely it is," Sabbah said. “But you know students: students are hungry.”
From there, Sabbah would reach out to his mother to ask her how to make this or that. And Sabbah kept learning how to make the food better.
And better he got. In 2023 and 2024, he earned one of the most prestigious nods in the food world by becoming a finalist for a James Beard Award two years in a row.
“It was one of the greatest honors that I’ve ever had,” Sabbah said.
Choosing Utah
Shortly after college, Sabbah and his wife moved to the Bay area, where he started a business and didn’t work in the restaurant industry for a while. But his dream of owning his own restaurant was still there.
They visited Utah for a wedding and decided they wanted to come back to the Beehive State to live.
He moved back and opened up a clothing store. In 1999, an advertisement for a restaurant space caught his eye.
Soon after, he bought the space that would become Mazza. When he first walked in, he said he didn’t have much experience.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” Sabbah said. “I didn’t have the experience. I had washed dishes and flipped hamburgers.”
Just like cooking, he picked up the restaurant business quickly. He started out as a takeout service with four or five sandwiches and four or five sides on the entire menu. After a couple years, it took off, and that’s when Sabbah started to hope he could have his dream of a sit-down restaurant realized.
And many of the crew he hired when he first started are still with him — a tribute to Sabbah and the community he created with the restaurant.
“I got into this business because I like to cook,” Sabbah said. “So when I came back here, I brought my top crew, I chose people who I knew not only they are the best at every position, but they work well together. And they’re still in the kitchen.”
Mazza hits some hard times
Like many restaurants in the industry, the COVID-19 pandemic did a number on Sabbah’s business. In 2019, he opened a large location in Sandy, which he had to close in 2020 after the pandemic took its hold on the industry. He had to close the location in the 9th and 9th neighborhood of Salt Lake City as well.
Despite the Sugar House location continuing to thrive, the debts from the previous expansions are still piling up, so Mazza and Sabbah have turned to the community for help. They started a GoFundMe and will be hosting an event in December to help raise funds to pay off some of those debts and keep the beloved restaurant a staple in the Salt Lake community.
Sabbah said he has been overwhelmed by the support he’s received since opening up about the struggles with the debts.
“It was emotionally overwhelming to see people come and donate small amounts or larger amounts, it didn’t matter. It came from the heart,” Sabbah said. “People gave me more than I deserve and sometimes more than they could afford, because they felt like they don’t want to lose Mazza.”
As someone who moved here from another country, Sabbah said Utah is now home and has always been a place he’s felt welcome.
“The GoFundMe campaign was successful in that I saw people coming through with generosity and kindness and love,” Sabbah said. “And that is very important.”
What I ordered
When I went into the cozy Sugar House establishment, Sabbah could be seen walking from table to table, chatting affably with customers.
“I consider pretty much the majority of the people that walk in here like friends, because I know them, I know their lives, I know things about them, you know, we chat,” Sabbah said. “The whole experience is good.”
The man next to me kept raving about the french fries, so I need to go back and order those next time.
I tried the Mushroom & Cauliflower Kabseh while my friend ordered the Maghmoor & Rice. Both dishes were delicious and offered up their own unique flavor profiles.
We also shared the Baba Ganooj & Pita. The pita bread comes out all warm, and then I dipped it in the fresh roasted eggplant blend — it’s a real treat.
If you haven’t tried out Mazza yet, I highly recommend it. You can sense the passion for the food and you can taste the quality in ingredients when you check it out for yourself.
“You have to love the job and this is my dream,” Sabbah said. “I’m actually doing my dream job, which is to own a restaurant.”
