Food to make the poets swoon
By Dan Mahoney
Pita Coast rolled onto campus like a giant wave of deliciousness for a brief few months in summer 2025. Housed in a brightly painted food truck, but tethered to its rocky perch, Pita Coast was one of the more locally visible, and maybe tastiest, projects to come out of COA’s Diana Davis Spencer Hatchery in recent years. I visited with hopes of sampling some genuine Syrian street food in Maine. I was not disappointed.
When I arrived, I was greeted by Mustafa Khorzom ’25, one half of the Pita Coast team, who directed me to the small and appetizing menu. I decided to order a little of everything: chicken shawarma pita, falafel pita, za’atar chips, hummus and pita, Syrian salad, and a hibiscus soda to wash it all down with.
After a couple of minutes of waiting, a space opened up at a nearby picnic table. As I was sitting, Shea Turner-Matthews ’26 (the other half of Pita Coast) arrived with the hummus, za’atar chips, and hibiscus soda. I love chips and all things chip-like, so naturally I went for the za’atar chips first. What a wonderful idea taking za’atar—the popular spice blend from the Levant—and generously sprinkling it onto chips. It made the snack an earthy adventure with hints of thyme and citrus, and caused me to reevaluate the flagrant abominations of my snacking past. Next up was the hummus, which can veer wildly depending on ratios of cumin, tahini, and lemon... Pita Coast’s hummus appeared ethereal, the deep pool of olive oil in its center ringed with bold stripes of paprika and pita chips. Wonderful!
Listen close: Bread is THE make-or-break thing for a pita sandwich. It needs to be soft, chewy, rich, and bouncy with a balanced flavor. The pita at Pita Coast was as good as it gets outside of a Middle Eastern bakery. Bravo. The falafel wrap was good sized, filled with just the right amount of fresh ingredients (lettuce, pickle, tahini, tomato) to allow falafel to be the star of the show. Falafel is tricky, you want that crisp exterior (deep fried or baked) to give way to a perfectly moist, rich, flavorful interior. It’s a delicate ecosystem. I ate... I swooned... I revelled... I tell you, eating that falafel pita was like a daydream. It transported me. It’s a difficult thing to accomplish when all is said and done—not the dream—but the creation of a perfect sandwich. But that is what we found at Pita Coast for a few short months. Kudos to its co-creators, Mustafa and Shea.
