With a grand opening July 26, Sarah Khoshaba is bringing back the classics with two conjoined businesses and menus rooted in nostalgia but crafted with modern skill.
Sarah Khoshaba had a good thing going. Her New York City deli, Gunther's, was the culmination of a pandemic-era hustle that began with viral homemade soups she sold on Instagram as the "Soup Queen." Despite the metropolitan success, she recently walked away from it all and put Gunther's up for sale to buy a vintage diner car on a county road in Elizaville with an attached deli.
The grand opening party for Kiki's Elizaville Diner will be held this Sunday, July 26, noon to 6pm featuring live music, cornhole, face painting, and a dunk tank that Khoshaba scored from neighboring Rhinebeck Rentals on a whim. "I'm gonna have to get dunked for sure." says Khoshaba, still in her early 30s.
The structure at 573 East Kerleys Corners Road is one of the last surviving Kullman Dutchess prefabricated diner cars—a gleaming baby blue-striped steel time capsule built in 1956 and moved from Pennsylvania to Columbia County in 2005, days before it was scheduled for demolition. After a decade-plus in service set before a bucolic pond, it sat empty, used primarily as a filming location. Then Khoshaba came along.
Next door, she has already opened Kiki's Convenience, a well-stocked neighborhood shop and deli with a menu worth driving out of the way for all on its own, that's already a hit with locals. Early mornings see road crews stopping in for coffee and breakfast in their high-vis vests—a good omen for any new business around here.
The businesses are named after her nine-year-old Shiba Inu, Kiki, whose birthday happens to fall on opening day. Kiki will not be in attendance however. "He's a flight risk," she says with a somewhat exasperated chuckle.
Khoshaba’s diner obsession started in Jersey. She grew up frequenting her local diner after school and late on weekend nights. "It just played such a huge role in my upbringing that I've always had this thought in my head that one day I wanted to own one," she says. "I just love all the moving parts to it. It's chaotic, but it's also kind of like a safe space for me."
Before Kiki's and before becoming the Soup Queen, she spent years working in the music industry as an assistant to renowned agent Cara Lewis, whose clients at the time included Travis Scott and Chance the Rapper, and later helping manage the Knitting Factory. When the pandemic closed everything, she pivoted to food and never looked back.
She first spotted the Elizaville property a couple of years ago while up for a visit and loved it immediately, but the timing wasn't right. When it came back on the market, she kept returning. "I came up here and told myself, 'I'm just gonna come look at it,' and then I did it again, and again and again, and finally I was like, I just need to make this happen," Khoshaba recalls. "It's exactly what I wanted, but both in one place. I wanted a deli, I wanted a diner, and they're attached!"
She now lives in Kingston and drives out most mornings to put in 14-to-16-hour days. The staff is largely local hires, plus a couple of friends from the city who needed to "touch grass" and ended up moving in with her. The enterprise, she says, already feels like the beginning of something real.
Before the diner opened its doors, there were already plenty of reasons to make the drive. Kiki's Convenience is more than a deli counter—it's a proper neighborhood shop stocked with groceries, pantry staples, beer, a wide selection of sodas, juices, and coffee, and seating for those who want to hang inside or at the pond-side picnic tables.
The sandwich menu is extensive—hot and cold options run the gamut from classic Italian combos and a Reuben to a French dip with au jus, a chicken parm on a sesame sub, and a house roast beef with horseradish aioli and crispy shallot on a hard roll, with most sandwiches coming in around $10. Burgers are built on five-ounce grass-fed beef, with options including the Queso Burger with jalapeño, avocado, and fried onion (all under $15). Breakfast runs from a classic egg-and-cheese on a hard roll to a breakfast burrito ($10) with sharp cheddar, potato, onion, and green pepper in a flour tortilla. Both the house made green and red salsas are killer.
The breakfast burrito is something Khoshaba considers a bit of a personal mission. "You can't find them here, and it's really hard to even find a good one in the city, to be honest. I would travel for a good breakfast burrito. Now we don't have to."
On top of it all, the convenience store is making New York City-style pizza—18-inch, thin-crust, charred, and bubbly. Pizza was not in the original plan, but the oven was still there and the previous owners convinced her she had to keep them coming. "I was like, 'Well, fuck it. I guess I'm doing pizza too.'" She brought in a friend from Welcome Home Bakery in Brooklyn to develop the dough. "People may call it burnt, but I call it nicely charred."
Pies run $15–$22 and include a Margherita ($16) with marinated tomato, garlic, basil, and fresh mozzarella; a Forager's Friend ($21) with fontina, taleggio, onion, and chef's choice of mushroom; a Spicy Hawaiian ($19) with ham, pineapple, and pickled jalapeños; and the Kiki's Special ($20) with vodka sauce, mozzarella, and house-made sweet sausage, among others.
The diner will be open Thursday through Sunday, 7am to 8pm, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner service. The format is classic blue-plate—omelets, eggs Benedict, pancakes, waffles, biscuits and gravy—but crafted with real attention to ingredient quality and execution. The kitchen is run by chef Robert Wallen, who cut his teeth at the Phoenicia Diner.
The baked goods at both deli and diner—black and whites, homemade linzer cookies, and whatever else strikes the mood—come from baker Ann Nickinson, a veteran of several Hudson Valley spots who comes in three to four times a week and essentially runs her own program. "One day she just started pumping out these other things we never talked about," Khoshaba says. "And I was like, 'you know what? I'm not even gonna ask you what you're making anymore.' I trust her."
Beyond the comfort-food anchors, the menu's ambition, scale, and its pricing come as a pleasant surprise. Breakfast platters run $10–$21 and span everything from a Sunshine Platter ($10)—two eggs any way, choice of meat, home fries, and toast—to Shrimp and Grits ($20) with breakfast sausage, roasted fennel, and fontina, to a Bibimbap Skillet ($16) with gochujang beef, pickled radish, and fried eggs. Five variations of eggs benedict include a Norwegian ($16) with smoked salmon, red onion jam, and dill pickle hollandaise, and a Kitchen Sink ($16) with fried bologna, bacon, and sausage gravy.
Lunch and dinner sandwiches are served with fries or salad: a Reuben ($13), a Barry Burger ($15) with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, and a fried egg, and a French Dip ($15) with au jus. Dinner entrees stay remarkably affordable—meatloaf with mashed potatoes and red glaze ($18), Rainbow Trout with buttered grits and roasted broccolini ($22), Steak Frites with bearnaise ($24), Chicken Pot Pie with puff pastry ($16).
Desserts reach into the childhood vault: a banana split ($10), root beer float ($6.50), and the Cookie Monster Sunday ($8.50)—cookie dough ice cream, mini sugar cookies, strawberries cut to mimic Kiki’s ears, chocolate sprinkles, and whipped cream.
Khoshaba knows what kind of place she wants this to be, and is equally clear about what she wants to avoid. The Phoenicia Diner gets name-checked a lot as a success story, but it's also notoriously hard to get into once the weekenders and influencers wake up. "I don't want to become that spot where someone that lives down the street can't get into," she says. "I think people are just excited to have something open again, and with the rich history, I think they're happy to see that there's an owner that's here every day."
Her mother has visited enough times now to revise her initial concerns about the ambitious project. "I think now she's like, 'you're a little less of a psycho,' and more like 'you knew what you want, and you're finally going after it.'"
Kiki's Elizaville Diner grand opening party is Sunday, July 26, noon–6pm, at 573 East Kerleys Corners Rd, Elizaville, NY. Kiki's Convenience is open Monday–Friday 6am–8pm, Saturday–Sunday 8am–8pm. The diner opens Thursday through Sunday, 7am–8pm. (845)756-3559.
