The family-run Sabah’s House catering and food cart operation will replace Leunig’s Petit Bijou in the city-owned kiosk at the corner of Church and College streets in Burlington. Church Street Marketplace, which requested proposals for the 135-square-foot space earlier this year, awarded a three-year lease to Mustafa Khudaier, who runs Sabah’s House, a business founded by his mother, Sabah Abbas.
Khudaier, 19, said he hopes to open by the end of the month with a menu of Middle Eastern fare, such as shawarma and cardamom tea, and what he described as “American classics”: breakfast pastries, sandwiches, salads and coffee drinks. The kiosk will serve year-round, Tuesday through Sunday.
Leunig’s Bistro & Café had operated the kiosk seasonally since 2017 under the previous 10-year lease. Co-owner Amy Bernhardt told Seven Days in February that staffing, competition and the “struggling” downtown population challenged the spin-off operation.
Khudaier, a 2025 Burlington High School graduate, has been running a seasonal shawarma cart on the same corner as the kiosk for two years. Before that, he vended at the BTV Market. Sabah’s House also makes regular appearances at Vermont Green FC games and the South End Get Down.
“I always wanted this spot,” Khudaier said of the kiosk at 180 College Street
The family moved to Vermont in 2014 as refugees from the Iraq War. Abbas, who is also an artist, started a small catering business in 2019, doing pop-ups and selling food such as chicken and vegetable sambusas at the Old North End Farmers Market. “She’s the one with the recipes,” her son said.
His mother is designing an eye-catching mural that will be painted on the kiosk. “I want people who come by to remember it,” Khudaier said.
Follow @sabah.house on Instagram for updates.
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