Syrian Cuisine

Syrian cooking is the most widely travelled Arab cuisine in the world, and that is no accident: it is a cuisine served as many small plates rather than one large dish, and that format suits restaurants anywhere.

Mezze — the heart of it

Mezze is not a starter course in the European sense. It is a full meal of small plates arriving together: hummus, mutabbal, tabbouleh, fattoush, kibbeh, muhammara, makdous, vine leaves. The idea is a varied table eaten slowly.

Aleppo and Damascus

Aleppo is known for dried red pepper, cherry kebab and muhammara; Damascus leans towards gentler cooking — stuffed vegetables, fatteh and slow stews. Both share the seven-spice blend, sumac and pomegranate molasses.

Kibbeh

Kibbeh is the dish Syrian cooking is proudest of, and it has dozens of forms: fried, baked in a tray, raw, with lemon, with sumac. All are built on bulgur and very finely minced meat; the difference is in the filling and the cooking.

Shawarma

Syrian shawarma is the original from which every other version branches. Meat or chicken is marinated and stacked on a vertical spit, then served in bread with toum and pickles — and toum itself, garlic and oil and lemon and nothing else, is an art in its own right.