Popular downtown Ocean Springs restaurant is closing. Here’s what will happen next
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Phoenicia will close March 15 and reopen April 1 at a new U.S. 90 location.
- Owner Issam Sabagh moves nearly 29 years of menu, decor and staff to site.
- New site adds parking, larger kitchen, courtyard and a 100‑person ballroom.
Phoenicia Gourmet Cuisine in downtown Ocean Springs is closing on Government Street, but only for a few weeks to move to a new location.
Issam “Sam” Sabagh opened the restaurant 29 years ago in Ocean Springs. It became known for its diverse breakfast and brunch menus along with lunch and dinner entrées few other restaurants in South Mississippi serve.
It’s become so popular, customers sometimes have to park more than a block away to get a parking place on the weekends.
When Farm & Flame restaurant closed in January at 1108 Bienville Blvd., Sabagh saw it as an opportunity to own, rather than lease, a restaurant and give his business a makeover.
Renovations are under way at the new location on U.S. 90, just east of the Washington Avenue intersection. After this weekend, the transformation really begins.
“We’re going to close this Sunday (March 15) and reopen the morning of April 1,” he said.
What’s going to the new place?
After operating a successful restaurant for nearly three decades in the downtown, “We’re going to start all over again,” he said.
The new place has its own parking lot, a newer building and a bigger kitchen. Sabagh has even bigger plans. A courtyard with a fountain will be added at the entrance and an addition on the west side of his new restaurant will be a ballroom with space for 100 people.
Most everything at the restaurant will move with them, so the transition will feel classic and familiar to regulars. The white tablecloths and comfortable black chairs, the clean decor, the restaurant reviews and awards showing Phoenicia was “restaurant of the year” in Mississippi will be boxed up and relocated.
Will the menu change?
Also moving to the new restaurant are the menus that give South Mississippi a taste of Lebanese and Mediterranean food.
They make their own hummus and feature “fresh and healthy” selections, including vegetarian selections, stuffed grape leaves, several varieties of salads.
Among their house specialties are beef, chicken shawarma marinated in olive oil and Mediterranean spices, kabobs and even shrimp and grits for those who like Southern dishes.
The breakfast menu invites customers to eat healthy with an egg white garden omelette or go decadent with oyster Benedict. It’s one of the few places in South Mississippi to find blintzes, potato pancaes and Hawaiian pancakes with mineapple and mango on the breakfast menu.
Sabagh said the first priority will be to get moved and continue to serve their customers and then improve and expand the new restaurant.
