Food
What to eat, where to find it, what it costs.
100 Food
Kleicha, the feast cookie of the Jazira
Filled with date paste, walnut or coconut, and scented with cardamom and nigella. In the Jazira the same tray is baked for Easter and for Eid al-Fitr alike.
Wheels and half-moons filled with date paste, scented with cardamom and nigella · Variable — sold by weight; ask the price at the counter · Hasakah
Carob Drink (Kharroub)
A dark brown drink that tastes of cocoa and contains none, and no caffeine either. Iced in summer, hot in winter. The fourth glass on the Ramadan tray.
Variable — a glass and a jar are priced apart, ask at the counter · Latakia
Carob molasses, dibs al-kharroub
Pods are picked in the second half of August and dried, and in autumn water draws the sweetness out. The pantry’s third syrup, eaten with tahini on bread.
The price of a jar moves with the harvest; ask at the spice shop · Tartus
Khubz Arabi — Syrian Flatbread
Syria’s everyday loaf: leavened, two-layered, hollow in the middle. It puffs and falls in the oven in seconds, and at the table it does the work of a fork.
Warm two-layered flatbread with a pocket in the middle · Variable — ask the price of a stack at the bakery · Damascus
Kmaj Homsi — the Bread of Homs
A thick round loaf dimpled all over by fingertips, scattered with coarse salt, nigella and red pepper. The holes are likened to the citadel’s battlements.
A thick dimpled loaf under coarse salt, nigella and red pepper · Variable — ask the price per loaf at the bakery · Homs
The iftar cannon
One blank round fired at the sunset call to prayer. Before clocks and radio it told a whole city the fast was over, and Damascus still fires it nightly.
Free — you hear it on the street · Damascus
Havana Café
On Port Said Street since 1945: the poets’ coffeehouse, backgammon tables, a Damascene breakfast. Expropriation saved it from becoming shops in the 1980s.
Arabic coffee beside French and Italian style brews; a Damascene breakfast in the morning — hummus, fatteh, ful · Cheap; people sit for hours over one glass of tea — ask the price at the door · Damascus
Aleppo Almond Drink
Almonds are boiled in the shell, peeled and worked into a white concentrate, then whisked with milk and ice. In Aleppo this is the glass of good news.
Variable — a bottle of concentrate and a glass are priced apart, ask at the counter · Aleppo
Choereg — Aleppo’s Armenian Sweet Bread
A braided sweet bread of milk and eggs, scented with mahlab. It reached Aleppo with the city’s Armenian bakeries and now sits on counters right across it.
A mahlab-scented braid under egg wash and sesame · Variable — ask the price per loaf at the bakery · Aleppo
Walnut sujuk: the autumn sweet of Aleppo
Walnuts threaded on a string are dipped again and again in thickened grape must, then hung for weeks to dry. In Aleppo it is the autumn sweet you carry.
A rod built from strung walnuts dipped layer by layer in thickened grape must · Variable — sold by weight; ask the price at the counter · Aleppo
White Coffee (Qahwa Bayda)
Coffee in name only: boiling water with a few drops of orange blossom water. Caffeine free, served hot in a cup after dinner, when coffee would be too late.
A household offering; there is no glass to buy — the only cost is the bottle · Damascus
Baharat, the seven-spice blend
Cloves, black pepper, allspice and cinnamon: the blend under most Syrian dishes. What goes into it, where the name came from, and how to buy it at the counter.
Variable — ask the price by the kilo at the counter · Aleppo
