Food
What to eat, where to find it, what it costs.
235 Food
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.
Variable — ask the price of a mezze plate when you sit down · Damascus
Shorbat Adas
Red lentils, cumin and a lot of lemon. In Ramadan it is the first spoonful after the fast in Damascus, and the cheapest hot plate the rest of the year.
Variable — one of the cheapest hot plates; ask the price when you order · Damascus
Sheikh el-mahshi
Stuffed vegetables without the rice: courgette or small aubergine filled with meat and pine nuts, simmered in yoghurt. Guest food on the Aleppo table.
Variable — ask the price of a portion when you order · Aleppo
Sfiha
Minced meat with pomegranate molasses and pine nuts, spread raw on thin dough. Aleppo calls it sfiha or lahm bi ajin, and it is not quite the lahmacun you know.
Variable — ask the price per piece when you order · Aleppo
Mahshi
Courgettes, aubergines, peppers and vine leaves filled with rice, minced lamb and spice. Home cooking in Damascus, and a lunchtime dish in restaurants.
Variable — ask the price of a portion when you order · Damascus
Mamounieh
Aleppo eats this semolina pudding for breakfast: semolina toasted in butter, syrup poured over, cinnamon and pistachio on top, salty cheese beside it.
Variable — ask the price of a portion when you order · Aleppo
Mate
A bitter South American infusion that became the daily drink of the Syrian coast: a gourd, a metal straw, and a sitting that can run for hours on end.
Variable — ask the price of a packet and a set at a spice shop · Latakia
Maarouk
The bread of Ramadan: an enriched sweet dough scented with mahlab, filled with date paste and covered in sesame. It goes out on trays hours before iftar.
Variable — ask the price per piece at the stall · Damascus
Kishk
Bulgur fermented in soured yoghurt, dried in the sun and ground to a powder. It is made at the end of summer and eaten all winter in the Homs countryside.
Variable — ask the price of a plate when you order · Homs
Karabij Halab
Small semolina domes filled with walnut, set around a bowl of natef: a white foam whipped from soapwort root. The sweet that carries the name of Aleppo.
Variable — ask the price per kilo and whether the natef is charged separately · Aleppo
Freekeh
Wheat cut green and set alight in the field. The smoke stays inside the grain, and northern Syria builds both its soup and its pilaf on this one cereal.
Variable — ask the price of a plate when you order · Aleppo
Fattoush
The fried bread goes in last so that it stays crisp: tomato, cucumber, purslane, mint and sumac. On the Damascus table all summer long and through Ramadan.
Variable — ask the price of a salad plate when you sit down · Damascus
