A few weeks ago, I ate a perfectly lovely meal at Gazala Place, one of the very few restaurants in the United States specializing in Druze cuisine. To be precise, it’s one of exactly two Druze restaurants in the United States: the other is Gazala’s, also owned by Israel-born Druze chef Halabi Gazala. Apparently, Chef […]

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At first, I worried that I’d picked the worst possible moment to visit Duzan, a Palestinian restaurant in Astoria: the entryway to the restaurant was littered with a small pile of lumber and construction tools, and I approached the place just as one of the owners was about to light up a cigarette outside. He […]

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I thought I was pretty slick when I headed out to Brooklyn for “Syrian” food. I’d eyeballed Damascus Bread and Pastry on Atlantic Avenue quite a few times, and decided that it was time to finally venture in. When I looked up the address again, I found a listing (and a solitary yelp review) for […]

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The guys at Yemen Café in Brooklyn don’t mess around: before we even had a chance to think about what we wanted to order, an efficient, non-communicative waiter slammed two bowls of soup, a few pieces of lemon, something resembling a fresh tomato salsa, a pair of salads topped with more of the salsa,  and […]

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I’m half Greek and half Russian, which means that I’m supposed to fully hate Turks, Turkey, and everything Turkish.  I don’t hate anybody, of course, but I was raised with some very specific ideas about the centuries of battles between Turks and Greeks. For example, my Greek father taught me that everything that is good […]

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