For 26 years, Mazza has quietly occupied a corner near 15th and 15th, serving creamy hummus, hand-ground spices, warm pita, lamb kebabs, and some of the most consistently respected Middle Eastern food in Utah.

The restaurant survived recessions, shifting food trends, neighborhood change, and the rise of corporate dining concepts. But according to Mazza founder Ali Sabbah, survival has become harder than ever, not because Utah stopped loving local restaurants, but because the economic environment that once allowed them to exist is disappearing.

“We are the neighborhood restaurant,” Sabbah says. “Our clientele is middle-class people from the neighborhood and from outside the neighborhood who have more sophisticated palates, more well traveled.”

That customer base, he says, is under pressure.

Across Salt Lake City, luxury restaurants continue to open. High-end dining rooms remain packed. Investors continue buying buildings in formerly quirky neighborhood districts. Chains increasingly move into areas once dominated by independent businesses. Meanwhile, many middle-class restaurants, the kinds of places that helped shape Salt Lake’s local identity over the past two decades, are struggling to survive.

Sabbah believes Utah’s restaurant industry increasingly reflects what economists call a “K-shaped economy,” where affluent consumers continue spending while everyone else grows more cautious.

“The upscale restaurants are doing phenomenally well,” he says. “But the middle-class restaurants and neighborhood places are struggling.”

Mazza’s story mirrors that shift almost perfectly.

When Sabbah arrived in Utah from Lebanon in 1982, Salt Lake City barely had a Middle Eastern food scene at all. Authentic Lebanese ingredients were difficult to find. Cilantro was nearly impossible to buy.

“I remember going all over town looking for cilantro,” he says. “We couldn’t find one single store that carried cilantro.”

At the time, Salt Lake’s culinary landscape was far more limited than it is today. Sabbah remembers walking into grocery stores and seeing aisle after aisle of industrial white bread.

“It felt literally like you were eating sponge with sugar in it,” he says.

Like many immigrant restaurateurs, Sabbah saw something missing. He missed the food he grew up with in Lebanon, where meals centered around fresh herbs, olive oil, spices, grilled meats, and traditional breads. He also realized that Utah had almost no access to authentic Lebanese cuisine.

Years later, after other business ventures, he stumbled onto a classified ad for a small bakery space. He had little formal restaurant training and limited money. Still, he negotiated a payment arrangement with the owner, remodeled the space himself, and opened Mazza in March 2000.

The restaurant grew slowly but steadily.

Sabbah kept the menu intentionally small at first, refining recipes through repetition and customer feedback. Over time, Mazza became one of the defining independent restaurants of Salt Lake’s growing food scene.

But success created new problems.

As neighborhoods like 9th and 9th became more desirable, outside investors began buying property. Lease rates climbed. National chains started moving into areas once defined by local businesses.

“That’s a sad and unfortunate thing,” Sabbah says. “A lot of investors buy a good formula and then basically turn around and water it down.”

Mazza’s 9th and 9th location operated successfully for years before COVID hit. Sabbah hoped to buy the building but says negotiations became increasingly difficult after investor groups entered the picture. Eventually, the lease terms became unaffordable.

When the pandemic arrived in 2020, he shut the location down and never reopened it.

At nearly the same time, Sabbah was dealing with another massive financial gamble: a new restaurant in Sandy inside the former Training Table building on State Street.

The project required far more renovation than expected.

“Everything literally had to be rebuilt,” he says. “The mechanicals, the hoods, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, landscaping, bathrooms, everything.”

The investment was enormous. The restaurant had finally started gaining momentum when COVID shutdowns arrived.

“Three days before COVID, I told my wife, ‘I think we’re finally turning the corner,’” Sabbah recalls.

Then the shutdown happened.

He eventually sold the building at a major loss.

“My real estate agent told me if I had left the building untouched and sold the land, I probably would have made more money,” he says.

For independent restaurant owners, that reality has become increasingly common. In some cases, the land beneath restaurants has become more valuable than the restaurants themselves.

At the same time, operating costs continue climbing. Staffing remains difficult. Ingredient costs fluctuate constantly. Consumer behavior has changed.

And yet Sabbah continues obsessing over details many customers never notice.

Mazza grinds its own spice blends in-house. The restaurant uses extra virgin olive oil throughout its cooking. Sabbah avoids industrial fryer oils, instead purchasing expensive expeller-pressed organic canola oil that costs nearly three times more than conventional alternatives.

“The hardest recipes to perfect are the simplest ones,” he says while describing hummus preparation. “It becomes a matter of slight techniques.”

That philosophy extends beyond cooking. Many of Mazza’s employees have worked there for years, some for decades. Recipes are taught carefully, repeatedly, and with explanation, not just measurements.

“I explain why we add a particular spice at a certain stage, why we cook something at a certain temperature,” Sabbah says. “They get the essence of what we’re trying to do.”

That consistency helped build Mazza’s loyal following. But Sabbah also worries about what Salt Lake loses when independent restaurants disappear.

Neighborhood restaurants create more than meals. They create identity. They become gathering places. They shape how cities feel.

Sabbah points to places like Coffee Garden, The Tower Theatre, neighborhood bookstores, wine bars, and independently owned restaurants that once gave districts like 9th and 9th a distinct personality before outside investment accelerated.

“It’s not the same anymore,” he says.

The irony is that many of the businesses now struggling helped make those neighborhoods desirable in the first place.

Today, Salt Lake’s food scene is unquestionably more sophisticated than the city Sabbah encountered in 1982. Utahns are more knowledgeable about ingredients, bread, olive oil, and global cuisine than ever before. Restaurants like Mazza helped create that shift.

But the economic conditions that allowed immigrant-owned neighborhood restaurants to grow organically are becoming harder to sustain.

The danger for cities like Salt Lake is not simply losing a restaurant. It is losing the kinds of places that gave the city its texture before national chains, investor groups, and rising property values began reshaping entire neighborhoods.