Sumac: New Mediterranean restaurant opens in downtown Missoula

You’ve got to do a little bit of searching to find one of the not-so-obvious entrances to downtown Missoula’s newest restaurant, but it’s worth it.

Sumac, located inside the historic Florence Hotel, has an entrance in the alley and a fairly covert entry near the Florence’s indoor lobby.

“It’s our little hidden gem,” said head chef Abe Risho, who opened the place with his wife Caitlin along with Runn and Sasha Vermel and Ryan Nicodemus.

It’s a fast-casual Mediterranean breakfast and lunch spot, featuring a coffee bar, an in-house bakery and plenty of seating.

For breakfast, they’ve got items like a savory crepe filled with egg, melted cheese, sesame crunch and a choice of bacon, sausage or mushrooms. They also offer a daily selection of savory pastries or mamonia, which is a warm semolina porridge with rose syrup, butter, cinnamon, pistachio and fresh fruit. On weekends, they’ll serve shakshuka and an item called koulshi labas — crispy pita chips tossed with tomatoes, peppers, olives, egg, tahini, sumac onions and melted cheese.

For lunch, you can order a wrap, a rice bowl or a salad bowl. You can then build it with lamb, beef, rotisserie chicken, mushrooms or falafel. Then you add veggies like roasted cauliflower or stewed green beans with tomato and tamarind. Then, finally, you add one of their sauces like chermoula, which is made with Aleppo pepper, preserved lemon and ginger and cover it all with a crunchy topping.

“Our pretzel buns have been very popular so far,” said Runn Vermel as he worked in the busy kitchen on Wednesday.

The breakfast menu also features a la carte items like smoked salmon, hummus spread, avocado mash, housemade sourdough and merguez lamb sausage.

Jo and Mike Jakupcak were dining in Sumac on Wednesday. They remember Ray Risho’s restaurant, Perugia Old World Cooking. Ray’s two sons, Sam and Abe, opened the Silk Road on the Hip Strip with Sam’s wife Elise in 2009.

“We’re old-time restaurateurs,” Mike said, grinning. “I had the breakfast, and it was marvelous. I could just drink the sauce.”

Jo was equally impressed.

“I could write poetry about the bakery,” she said. “I had some bread with the hummus dip. And it had some wonderful olive oil in the center, and it was just perfect. Delightful.”

Risho has said that he’s been planning a restaurant like this since even before The Silk Road, which closed in 2016.

The new spot is located in the space that once held the kitchen and fine dining room of the Red Bird wine bar and restaurant, and then more recently the Second Set Bistro. A hi-fi bar called Shapes is going into the other half of the space that once held the Red Bird.

If you go, remember that Missoulians always rush to new spots in the first few weeks that they're open, so it might be a little busy.

Risho said his staff are working hard to keep up with the pace so far.

"We're finding our rhythm," he said.

Sumac is open every day except Mondays.