Pita Basket

There are multitudes of cuisines from different cultures that have yet to reach the palates of Western society. This was on Moe Elsaghir’s mind after working almost 40 years in Calgary’s restaurant industry. “I was working in steakhouses and pizza places and I was growing older,” he recalls. “So I started thinking about opening my own place. When I found the right location in 2003, I knew that there wasn’t much Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine in Calgary.” That led to Moe opening the Pita Basket Café.

Along with some great staples of his own diet, Moe sifted through the recipes he had memorized during his day-to-day work in restaurants – a collection four decades in the making –and built his menu. “I am diabetic, and I’m not the only one,” Moe says. “There are people who suffer from Celiac disease too. So I wanted to make food that caters to both diets. My favourites are the shish tawook and the fattoush salad.”