Help Sesamo Survive - Hell's Kitchen's Italian Table Is Fighting to Come Back

On the morning of February 26, my prep chef called: Con Edison was at the restaurant. I got there in seven minutes. I stood next to the technician as his device found a leak in the building's main gas line, and I watched him put a lock on it. I asked if it would be fixed by 4pm we had service that night. He said no. Probably not.|

That was 128 days ago. The lock is still on.

We're Sabrina and Nikita. We came to New York from Beijing and St. Petersburg, met here, and had our first date at an Italian restaurant. In November 2019 we spent two weeks in Italy, part of it on a farm where a grandmother taught us to make pasta by hand. A month later, we put our life savings into a lease on 10th Avenue. Three months after that, the world shut down. We opened anyway July 2020, into the quietest New York anyone had ever seen. We named the place Sesamo - Italian for sesame seeds, an ingredient at the heart of the Chinese kitchen Sabrina grew up with, wrapped in the language of the food we fell in love with. And what Chinese, Russian, and Italian families all share: everything that matters happens around the table.

We survived opening into a pandemic. We built something Hell's Kitchen made its own: the pre-theater regulars we get to their shows on time, the after-show crowd from MCC and the Irish Arts Center, the gay community that has shown up for us from the beginning, the first dates and anniversaries and birthday tables, the corporate dinners, and the neighbors who've watched three restaurants come and go in this space and decided this one was theirs. Some of our regulars come from Connecticut, from Texas, even from Germany, people who ate with us once and made Sesamo their "must visit when we're back in New York" spot. Last fall we surveyed our guests and asked how they'd feel if they could never dine with us again. Nearly 9 out of 10 said they'd be disappointed. We think about that answer every day now.

Because here's what the last four months have actually looked like.

Con Edison determined the building's gas main is leaking and undersized a building problem, not ours, and one we cannot legally touch. So we kept cooking anyway: full services, as many as 150 covers a night, on four induction burners. Our team has carried pots of hot water up and down the stairs, shift after shift, to keep the kitchen running the way it should. We bought the burners, the special pans that work on them, a new fryer all out of pocket. The fryer we bought in March has already died twice.

Nobody dining with us saw any of it. That was the point. Guests still tell us the food tastes the same. But we know what it's cost. Last year we were open every single day; since April, we've had to go dark on Mondays. We lost good people who'd been with us for years — four burners breaks even great cooks. The ones who stayed have carried us: Ana, Fidel, Richie, Adonis, Manuel, Melanie, Amanda, Adalis, and Bea are working six days a week, and some left second jobs to do it. They learned to cook and serve all over again on equipment none of them had ever touched.

We lost things we loved. Some of our handmade pastas the cacio e pepe, the uni tagliolini had to come off the menu, and people still ask for them every week. The kitchen is still turning out food we're proud of every night. But we want to give you back everything Sesamo is supposed to be.

The numbers: compared to the same period last year, nearly 3,900 fewer guests have sat at our tables. Revenue is down almost thirty percent more than $180,000.

We haven't paid ourselves since February. We've poured tens of thousands of dollars of our own savings into keeping this place alive the induction burners, the special pans, the fryer that's already died twice, the plumber, the FDNY inspections, and everything else it takes to hold a restaurant together when its kitchen has no gas. All of it on top of the more than $500,000 we've put into this restaurant since we signed our lease in 2019. Every vendor and every supplier who kept showing up for us got paid in full. We're proud of that. And we're running out.

The repairs the building needs have not been made. So we're doing what we've done since day one: handling it ourselves.

Getting our kitchen back means real construction: plumbing and electrical work for the gas repair, and rebuilding the walls that have to be opened up to do it. During part of that work, construction outside our space will may force us to close completely for a couple of weeks no revenue, while our team's families still count on their paychecks and the bills don't stop. And it means a legal fight we didn't choose but won't walk away from.

That's what this campaign is for.

Where every dollar goes:

And here's what's on the other side. The day the gas comes back on, the pastas return. The cacio e pepe, the pappardelle, and everything Nikita has been sketching for four months on paper instead of a stove: a udon carbonara with pork belly, gnocchi colored with purple cauliflower and spinach, squid ink pasta, branzino, scallops when they come into season in September. The comeback menu is already written. It just needs a flame.

Until then, we're open six days a week, cooking our hearts out on four burners. Come see us. Every table helps.

If you've ever ducked into Sesamo before a show, celebrated something at our table, or just believe a neighborhood restaurant that never stopped fighting deserves to finish the fight we'd be honored to have you with us.

Every donation gets a personal thank-you from the two of us. And when the burners come back on, the first night is for the people who got us there.

Sabrina & Nikita

Sesamo

764 10th Avenue