Tabbouleh
Not a grain salad but a herb salad: almost the whole plate is finely chopped parsley. The bulgur is a single spoonful and the lemon carries the rest of it.
- Where to eat it
- On the mezze table, beside grilled meat, and at iftar. Restaurants keep it in the salad section and chop it to order.
- Price
- Variable — ask the price of a mezze plate when you sit down
- When it is eaten
- Lunch and dinner; in summer and through Ramadan it is on every table
The proportion is what surprises most visitors. In the Levant tabbouleh is not a bulgur dish with herbs added; it is a parsley dish with a spoonful of bulgur. Flat-leaf parsley, cut as fine as thread, makes up the body of the plate. Mint, finely diced tomato, spring onion, lemon juice and olive oil go in beside it, and the fine bulgur is soaked beforehand and measured by the spoon.
The knife does the work
The skill here is in the cutting, not the cooking. Parsley must not be crushed as it is chopped; crushed parsley bleeds and the salad darkens within minutes. That is why tabbouleh is made when it is ordered rather than held in a bowl, and why the lemon goes in at the last moment.
How it is eaten
Not with a fork. A lettuce leaf or a young cabbage leaf is used as the spoon: you pinch some salad into the leaf and eat it that way. The leaves arranged around the plate are a tool, not a garnish.
Where to eat it
Among the opening plates of the mezze round. In Damascus it arrives with hummus and mutabbal, and it also sits beside grilled meat. During Ramadan it is one of the two fixtures on the iftar table, the other being fattoush.
Tips
- Eat it with a lettuce leaf rather than a fork — the leaf is the spoon
- Do not expect a grain salad: the bulgur here is one spoonful
- Ask for it freshly chopped; tabbouleh left standing darkens
- No meat and no dairy in it, which makes it useful on a vegetarian table
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 28, 2026