Cherry Kebab
Aleppo’s signature plate: small lamb meatballs cooked in sour cherry sauce, thin bread beneath, toasted pine nuts above. Sour and sweet on the same spoon.
- Where to eat it
- In the kebab restaurants of Aleppo. It is served in Damascus too, but far less commonly.
- Price
- Variable — ask the price of a portion when you order
- When it is eaten
- Lunch and dinner; sharpest with fresh cherries in early summer
The best known dish of the Aleppine kitchen. Small lamb meatballs are cooked in the juice of sour cherries, thin flatbread is laid underneath, and toasted pine nuts and parsley go over the top. The sauce is reduced until it thickens; by the time the plate reaches the table the bread has begun to drink it.
Where the taste comes from
The cherries are sour, not sweet. Sugar goes in, but the job of the sauce is not sweetness — it is to cut the fat of the lamb. The result sits between sour and sweet, and it is the plate that explains Aleppo’s position between the Anatolian and Levantine kitchens better than any other.
Where to eat it
In the kebab restaurants of Aleppo. Sour cherry season is early summer, but the sauce is made year round from dried or preserved fruit; made with fresh cherries in season it is sharper.
How to order it
A portion is usually for one and filling; if you have ordered mezze as well, a single plate can do for two. The sauce is mopped with bread, not chased with a fork.
Tips
- Mop the sauce with the bread — half the dish is underneath
- The cherries are sour, not sweet; do not expect a sweet dish
- A portion is filling; with mezze on the table one plate feeds two
- Fresh cherry season is early summer, preserved fruit covers the rest
Transparency
- How this was chosen
- Two kinds of record live here: the dish itself, and the place that serves it. Both are chosen and written by hand; ranking is not for sale and there are no sponsored entries. If a price range is not known for certain, it says so. Venues that serve alcohol are not listed on this site at all.
- Facts checked
- August 2026
- Last updated
- August 20, 2026