Moses Sabina, a native Portlander and chef for eight years, has taken over the nook of 703 Congress Street with plans to enhance the flavor inside the condominium with the giant pineapple painted on the side.
What’s currently The Friendship Café, a breakfast/ lunch staple for the West End neighborhood, will soon be something more. “I definitely want to elevate the food,” Sabina says about the eggs-and-toast-type plates the Friendship Café has been serving for five years or so. “My vision for myself in life is not really to cook breakfast,” he admits (he’s more of a dinner person), “but that’s the niche here,” so he’s going with it.
Sabina’s new menu will be “hearty comfort food with a breakfast angle on top of it,” he explains, featuring low country cooking and regional American dishes.
He’s taking it slow. “My plan is to come here and focus on the food and the service and just bring my experience,” he says. He’s worked as a chef at Cornell University, L’Ecole Francaise du Maine, and the Dogfish Café to gain experience and direction to open his own restaurant.
Now that he owns the Friendship, he's still taking his time, testing entrees on the daily specials board. When he’s ready to unveil his complete menu, largely inspired by Southern cooking, he’ll also lift the lid on the restaurant’s new name, Hot Suppa! — in February, he expects.
He will add a focus on after-lunch hours. But Hot Suppa!, Sabina says, is less of a mealtime name and more of a concept name. “It’s like when you put out a plate you should look at it and be like ‘that’s a hot suppa! I really want to eat that,’” Sabina says. He compares it to pointing out pretty girls or nice cars: When it looks good and feels good, people know it, and that makes it a hot suppa!
Extending the menu and the mealtimes will preheat the oven for what Sabina envisions to eventually be an all-day (and perhaps all-night) diner. Don’t let the name throw you, though: in true American-diner style, Hot Suppa! will always serve breakfast.
