Food
What to eat, where to find it, what it costs.
235 Food
Jaz maz
The egg dish of the coast: tomatoes cooked in fat with eggs broken over them, eaten with bread. The easy meal of a Latakia or Tartus morning or evening.
Variable — ask the price of a pan when you order · Latakia
Eetch
Aleppo’s cold bulgur mezze: coarse bulgur, onion, mint, olives, pepper paste and pomegranate molasses. None of the parsley of tabbouleh; the grain leads.
Variable — ask the price of a mezze plate when you order · Aleppo
Shaifoura
Shanklish cheese crumbled into chopped tomato and onion under olive oil. The mezze you meet most on the Syrian coast, scooped with bread, not with a fork.
Variable — ask the price of the mezze plate when you order · Latakia
Mansaf
Lamb cooked in a broth of dried fermented yoghurt and laid over bread or rice. The wedding and funeral tray of Hawran, and the national dish of Jordan.
Variable — in restaurants the tray is priced by the number of people · Daraa
Mashahmiyeh
Coarsely chopped lamb, tail fat and onion worked into the dough, then baked in a clay oven. Deir ez-Zor’s bakery plate, named after fat and eaten hot.
Variable — ask the price of a piece when you buy it · Deir ez-Zor
Malihi
Meat, bread, jameed and ghee. The midday plate of Hawran is built without rice, and that absence is the promise the table makes to the guest who sits at it.
Not a plate you buy — it belongs to the home table · Daraa
Qarimouta
Bulgur cooked with onion, tomato and parsley, then finished with lemon, mint and sumac, spooned into vine leaves and eaten by hand around Salamiyah in Hama.
Not a plate you buy — it belongs to the home table · Hama
Hnaini
Soft dates kneaded with Arab ghee until the two become one paste. Raqqa’s suhoor plate in Ramadan, and the same bowl in winter and at tribal gatherings.
Not a plate you buy — it belongs to home and hospitality tables · Raqqa
Abu Shalhoub
An old Damascus pot of courgette, coarse bulgur, garlic and coriander. Meat is optional, the original goes without it, and the dish carries three names.
Variable — it comes out as the pot of the day, so ask the price · Damascus
Bajariyeh
Lamb cooked in ghee and piled over torn clay-oven bread. The wedding tray of Deir ez-Zor, named after the Baggara tribe that cooked it for its guests.
Variable — it is made to order, so agree the price first · Deir ez-Zor
Zhourat
A dried mix of chamomile, sage, rose buds and thyme. It is steeped and never boiled, and it is what a Damascus home pours for its guests all winter long.
Variable — ask for the price per kilo and per packet at the stall · Damascus
Syrian Cheeses
Braided mshallaleh, brined akkawi, baladi that lasts three days. What is really on the breakfast cheese plate, and how to buy it at the market counter.
Variable — ask the price per kilo and how salty the batch is · Aleppo
