After the staff at Sammy’s Deli Restaurants served their final customers breakfast last week, they gave away the remaining food from the walk-ins and locked the doors for the last time. Regulars who have ordered breakfast from the restaurant since it opened in the late 1990s said farewell to Egli Daka, the cook behind the deli’s reliable breakfast plates, and Christina Black, who has greeted them behind the counter for years. 

It wasn’t a final farewell, however — both Daka and Black are now serving breakfast at nearby restaurant Dish on Thomas Avenue. 

Dish now opens at 7 a.m. for breakfast during the week, starting with a small menu that includes Sammy’s items such as the Carolina Country Breakfast with your choice of two eggs, hash browns or grits, and a biscuit, with bacon, livermush, and sausage available as add-ons. There are also breakfast sandwiches, and bowls of eggs over grits. Dish owner Lewis Donald says eventually, they’ll add more of Dish’s personality to the breakfast menu, with items like chicken fried steak breakfasts.

“It’s just about keeping breakfast in the community, and keeping those two people employed — doing what they do, what they’ve always done, what they know, and not much change,” he says. 

Donald believes this is a good time to start breakfast, as the slowdown in customers due to Covid-19 enables them to figure out the best way to integrate the former Sammy’s Deli employees into Dish’s operation. Black, for example, will use a cash register instead of Dish’s usual point-of-sale system, because that’s what she’s used to. 

“Hopefully by February or March, people are just flocking to us,” Donald says. 

See the Dish breakfast menu here.