One of Yael Cantor’s fondest food memories is of tuna salad.
“We lived in Israel and would spend summers in Richmond,” Cantor says. Born to a Moroccan-Israeli mother and a Jewish American father, her upbringing was divided between Tel Aviv, Israel and her father’s hometown, Richmond. “The thing that I would crave more than anything was my grandma’s tuna fish salad. And it’s not a crazy recipe, but it’s very different when you make it at home versus when you’re at your grandma’s house, sitting at the counter, and she makes it for you with a toasted english muffin,” she continues.
There is a difference, Cantor points out, between just eating something good and having something made for you. There is the food itself, and there is the celebration of being there to eat it. This lesson was further impressed upon her by her mother’s side of the family, who marked Fridays with Shabbat dinners in Ashkelon, a city south of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast. There, cousins gathered for dozens of salads, loaves of challah, spicy Moroccan fish, and, on particularly special days, a Tunisian dish of beef and potatoes made by Cantor’s aunt, Jenny.
These childhood experiences not only expanded her palate—helped by periods living in Hungary and Ukraine—but also solidified the idea of food being a conduit for care and comfort. It was only natural that Cantor would arrive where she is today, preparing to open her first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Susie’s, later this year in the Fan neighborhood.
Set to make its debut this fall at 1330 W. Main St., Susie’s marks the latest and most permanent step in a four-year journey that began in 2020, one of the worst years for the food service industry in recent memory, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A journey during which it seemed that a future restaurant was no longer on the horizon.
Just before the pandemic broke out, Cantor and her husband, Tony Hacker, moved to Israel to explore the possibility of a permanent move—one of many alternate timelines along the path to the birth of Susie’s. When air travel halted in an effort to reduce the spread, the two found themselves unexpectedly sheltering in place inside Cantor’s parents’ apartment, a roughly 800 square-foot space where cooking became a primary outlet.
“We just cooked every day,” Cantor says. “That was what we lived for.”
Once travel was finally possible, Cantor and Hacker returned to Richmond and leveraged what they learned during their cooking lockdown to launch a food pop-up, Susie & Esther, in August of that year. The project found its first home in the Jasper, which opened a ghost kitchen during the pandemic. Although Cantor and Hacker’s experience working front of house at several local mainstays—from Mamma Zu and Saison to Alewife and The Roosevelt—prepared them somewhat, the process was a trial by fire.
“The first pop-up, we were food processing hummus to order, I was baking cookies three minutes before we opened, and Tony was baking bread to order because we were so behind,” Cantor says.
After overcoming their learning curve, the pop-up gained a following, and Cantor and Hacker were nearly prepared to sign a lease on a brick-and-mortar spot in Malvern Gardens. But a gut instinct told them that it wasn’t the next step they needed, and they decided to pivot from the restaurant world entirely to explore roles outside of the industry.
When Cantor made the choice to return to the dream of a brick-and-mortar, she did it on her own. To distinguish the new venture from the earlier one, Cantor rebranded Susie & Esther to Susie’s.
Echoing past pop-ups, the menu at Susie’s will still fall under the Jewish-Mediterranean umbrella with some familiar favorites; there are plans for a deli case with to-go items like hummus, schug, harissa, and chickpea salad, as well as dishes that lend themselves better to a dine-in experience, like sandwiches, soups, salads, and a rotating vegetable of the day. Tying it all together will be a spirit of unfussiness and warmth, tangible evidence of Cantor’s personal evolution and her return home to food.
“Growing as a person was helpful. I feel secure and grounded now,” says Cantor.
