Middle Eastern

Posts about Middle Eastern food on The Joy of Food blog.

Café Medina - cassoulet

Café Medina

Vancouver, Canada (The Joy of Food) — I’m not exactly what you’d call a breakfast girl, and I usually say “brunch” is just an excuse to shove down a stack of 25 red velvet pancakes and day drink. If you build it, they will brunch, or something like that. But […]

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Zankou Chicken - half chicken, hummus, pickled vegetables

Zankou Chicken

Orange County, CA (The Joy of Food) — Zankou, you had me at “garlic sauce,” the Holy Grail in a little plastic container. Known officially as toum, it’s a whipped, thick, white paste that packs a potent garlic punch to start and then finishes with a lemon sting, a happy […]

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Furn Saj - chicken kabab plate

Furn Saj Restaurant & Bakery

San Diego, CA (The Joy of Food) — What they’re cooking at Furn Saj represents the country of Lebanon, the cuisine of which usually gets lumped together with a bunch of other stuff and labeled ‘Mediterranean food’ by folks who couldn’t locate the sea of the same name on a […]

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Sarkis Pastry - walnut baklava

Sarkis Pastry

Orange County, CA (The Joy of Food) — Sarkis Pastry is the house that baklava built, a Near Eastern bakery specializing in every type of baklava found under the sun. There’s one walnut-filled baklava called “kul-wushkur” which translated from Arabic means “taste and give thanks to heaven,” a phrase that […]

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Sagmani's Restaurant - chicken tikka, rice

Sagmani’s Restaurant

San Diego, CA (The Joy of Food) — If this were 1980’s sitcom television, Sagmani’s would be that place where everybody knows your name, a low-key, no-frills local joint serving some of the best homemade Iraqi food in San Diego to a dedicated and loyal clientele. Your GPS will route […]

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