Owner Garam Suleiman started Byte during the pandemic as a career pivot. Her company has grown steadily from its original conceptualization as a meal prep service, adding catering for parties and events, as well as private chef services. Now, the self-trained chef and Sal Suleiman, her husband and co-owner, have opened the Levantine cuisine-themed Byte cafe (8620 Delmar) in the Avenir luxury apartment complex in University City. Here’s what to know before you go.
The Menu
Garam’s Mediterranean-influenced menu includes kabobs, salads, shawarma, and gluten-free and vegetarian items—all made according to old recipes from her mother and mother-in-law and tweaked until she achieves a combination of American and Israeli cultures.
“One of her biggest secrets is the spices we import from overseas, so they’re fresher and more unique—and less commercialized,” Sal says. “The actual flavors and smells are totally different. A lot of what makes food better and different is the spice, the level of spice, and where they come from.”
Asked for examples, Garam launches into a long list. “Highly essential ingredients in the kitchen for us include sumac, seven spice, cumin, nutmeg, and cinnamon,” she says. “Also fresh herbs like thyme and mint. And fresh lemon.” Another favorite spice is za’atar, a wild thyme used in both savory and sweet dishes and as a garnish. Sumac and cumin are imported from her native Israel.
That philosophy carries through the menu. Garam was called the “queen of falafel.” She adds more seasoning to her falafel than most and serves it with a bright, lemony tahini. Breakfast offerings include shakshuka, the classic tomato-based Israeli dish with green hot peppers and baked eggs finished with fresh mint, as well as a Silan Granola bowl layered with oats, nuts, dates, halva, fresh fruit, and date syrup.
“A young boy said it was the best granola he’s ever had in his life,” Sal says. “I think he was 7. The same day, I had a lady in her 70s tell me the same thing. That made me smile.”
Other signature dishes include oven-roasted cauliflower steak finished with either chimichurri or tahini; kufta made with local beef in tahini sauce with roasted cherry tomatoes and pita; a freekeh salad with chickpeas roasted in sumac and cumin with an optional meat; and a mezze platter featuring homemade labneh with za’atar, muhammara, hummus, baba ganoush, olives, pickles, Sal’s red cabbage salad, and locally made pita.
A small bowl of preserved lemon pieces—a staple in the Suleiman household and in Israel—will accompany many savory dishes. The house-made condiment, fermented for weeks in its own juice with salt, spices, and olive oil, adds bright acidity and depth.
“It goes on everything, at every meal,” Garam says. “Take a bite without it and then with it. It’s amazing the difference it makes.”
Among Garam’s favorite dishes are her sumac chicken on pita with caramelized onions and an aggressively spiced eggplant served carpaccio-style with labneh or tucked into pita with boiled eggs, salad, tahini, amba (a condiment made with pickled green mangoes), and skhug (a cilantro-based spice).
“Some people tend to shy away from eggplant, and then they taste this one,” Garam says. “If I’d have to eat only one dish for a year, this would be it.”
Garam’s pastries and desserts are equally noteworthy. Her original Halva Date Byte—made with fewer than five ingredients and no added sugar—remains a customer favorite. New café offerings include Elias’s Cheese Kenafa, named after the couple’s son and featuring warmed crisp kataifi pastry filled with Mediterranean pasteurized sweet cheese and finished with fragrant rose syrup; Sweet Luke’s Berry Pavlova with rotating seasonal fruit; her grandmother’s coconut semolina cake; Baklabites; and Mediterranean-style vanilla ice cream topped with pistachios, halvah, dates, chocolate chips, and sweet syrup.
“Most people don’t know that ice cream has its roots in the Levant,” Garam says. “The early versions had a lot of texture; they were almost chewy. Now called Booza, we’ve found that Clementine’s comes closest to that authenticity.” At Byte, the brand’s Madagascar Vanilla flavor will be topped with pistachios, halvah, dates, chocolate chips, and maybe a rose water syrup.
On the beverage side, the cafe’s proprietary coffees are supplied by local roaster Park Avenue Coffee. Also offered are loose-leaf teas, matcha, and a full espresso program.
Every member of the Suleiman family has inspired a menu item, including daughter Leah’s Shoko, a rich steamed dark hot chocolate.
Drink options will increase once the liquor license is finalized. In the meantime, Byte’s signature Levantine lattes have become customer favorites, with pistachio (made from real pistachios, not syrup), rose (infused with rose water), and tahini leading the way. “Those flavors really reflect who we are, and we haven’t seen anyone else doing them locally,” Garam says.
The Atmosphere
“There’s a deep meaning in everything because it’s the story of our lives coming to the U.S. from a different country,” Garam explains. For example, the Byte logo includes a branch with three olives—representing their three children, ages 9, 7, and 6—and five leaves, representing their family of five. For the catering business, it includes the tagline: “Food made from heart and home.”
Byte means “home,” along with everything the word represents: warmth, simplicity, hospitality, culture, food, and especially flavor. Sal says it perfectly reflects both the multicultural aspects of the menu and the experience they hope to create. “On the plate, we combine Hebrew and Arabic—and Mediterranean and American.”
For the café’s décor, Garam has chosen a Mediterranean aesthetic with a black-and-gold color palette that incorporates “lots of sexy, warm elements.” Designed by the couple themselves, the café will offer seating for about 70 guests, with 30 seats inside and 40 on the patio, using a mix of upholstered banquettes and traditional tables.
A small market area will sell Byte-branded merchandise along with the imported spices, herbs, sauces, and pantry items that define the café’s flavors. While breakfast and lunch will be the primary focus, the space will also host private events, pop-up dinners, cooking classes, live music, holiday parties, and retail pop-ups highlighting local businesses, particularly women-owned companies.
“When people try my food, the most common thing I hear is that they can see the love in it,” Garam says. “It’s not only food. It’s culture. It’s love. It’s passion.”
The Backstory
Garam’s career started in marketing, sales, personal styling, and fashion. “I never imagined I would be a chef,” she says. But when she moved from Israel to St. Louis 12 years ago to join Sal after they married, she started paying more attention to food. In addition to exploring the local culinary scene, she and Sal began recreating the foods they had grown up eating in their hometown of Nazareth, in northern Israel.
After spending years as a stay-at-home mother, Garam launched Byte as an at-home meal prep business before expanding into catering and private chef services. The café is the next evolution of that business.
Thanks to the couple’s enthusiasm for entertaining, their friends were familiar with Garam’s made-from-scratch dishes—and they often said they wished they could serve her food at their own parties. “The spices we use are a little different,” Garam says. “I bring them from back home. The flavors and aromas are very rich.”
To make the café possible, Sal recently left a more-than-15-year career managing a local automotive group. “We love to host parties. We love to socialize. We like to serve people the exact foods we eat,” he says. “Owning a café is the perfect way to do that on an everyday basis. You are special; everybody’s special. Respect the guest. That is a prime concern.”
Although the café marks a major milestone, the couple sees it as just the beginning. Byte is a trademarked concept they hope to replicate someday. “It’s a home-based vision that can be duplicated and changed,” Sal says. “But it’s too soon to say how or where.”
Byte
📍 8620 Delmar, University City
📞 314-475-5555
⏰ Inaugural hours: Opens at 7 a.m. Mon & Tue and Thu–Sat for beverages and pastries, savory fare served from 8:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
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