Broaden your Middle Eastern palate
Nanaz Kitchen serves up gently flavoured clay-pot dishes and seafood, but don’t miss the eggplant salad
Simit is a chewy, tendercrumbed Turkish bread. Its date molasses-sweetened dough is twisted into a turban and encrusted in sesame seeds. The roll arrives with a caddy holding painted ceramic pots of luscious and pleasingly bitter olive oil and savoury, herbal za’atar. We dunk hunks of bread into the oil and spice mix allowing their flavours, textures, and aromas to meld on the tongue. Each mouthful is something greater than the sum of its parts.
At Nanaz Kitchen, the complimentary simit that begins lunch sums up our experience: a hospitable family-run restaurant, creating foods that broaden our Middle Eastern palate.
While the sign indicates Mediterranean food — there are a couple of dishes — the menu glimpses Middle Eastern culinary expanse, touching on dishes from its various nations. That’s not to say this is another shawarma shop where thinly sliced rotisserie meats pile onto pitas, to be doused in garlic and chili sauces, or a grill house with smoky skewers served with salad and fries.
Here, you’ll find foods traditionally cooked in clay pots, fish and seafood plates, and braised meats among the familiar trio of hummus, falafel and tabbouleh. True to the region, there are also hearty warm and hot vegetarian options. Colour and texture are important. While spicing can be less punchy than elsewhere, the accompanying pickles and sauces often coalesce the dish’s flavours.
Chef-owner Nansi Aburaneh’s story includes immigrating from Palestine and studying in culinary school while caring for small children and an ailing husband. Last August, about a decade after starting her home-based catering company, her restaurant opened in the old Manulife building near Weber and Northfield. The repurposed canteen retains some of the old corporate feel, but its two light-filled rooms are dotted with images and mementoes. There’s a conversational area by the electric fireplace and samovars and painted ceramics sit near where Turkish coffee is made over hot sand.
It sometimes feels like a cliché mentioning dishes are house-made or ingredients’ provenance, but here they’re worth noting. There’s pride when our server (Aburaneh’s daughter) says only french fries come out of a bag.
The restaurant imports certain key ingredients, such as the olive oil and za’atar — a spice mix including North African thyme, oregano and sesame seeds. Brining olives for a couple of weeks produces firm little green ones with a bitter tang and larger softer black ones with a floral note. Their tannur (tandoor) and brick oven turn out the plenitude of fresh breads including thick spongy flatbreads topped with sesame and kalonji (nigella seeds), manaeesh (sometimes called Arabian pizza), paper-thin shrak, and simit.
We add crisp and light Falafel (six pieces, $5.99) to the Nanaz Mezze’s array of starters and salads ($20.99). Many are good on their own but dipping from one bowl to scooping from another sparks them all. Lashings of olive oil dress mashes and purées — velvety hummus, savourful and smoky black olive-studded baba ghanoush. The tender cauliflower fritters’ magenta beet-sour cream dip tempers the blistered fried halloumi’s saltiness. The tabbouleh is all right, but waxing rhapsodic about the eggplant salad is easier: gorgeous confetti of golds, reds and purples, it balances soft with crunchy, and sweet with savoury and tart.
Green olives accompany the Shakshuka’s ($11.99) mild tomato stew that’s topped with frizzle-edged eggs. It was fine although often eggs are poached in the stew, allowing us the joy of swirling runny yolks with bread. Fried eggs are the default here (some folks didn’t appreciate the joy) but poached are available upon request.
Tender cinnamontinged chicken perches on its nubbly bed in the Chicken Freekeh ($24.99). Slow-cooked in chicken stock with whole, warm spices, the grains keep their smoky flavour. Scatterings of almonds and fried onions add crunch and sweetness; sour cream with za’atar brings brightness.
Finishing Ginger Tea ($2.99) and freshly blended Mint Lemonade ($4.99), our desserts arrive. Karawya ($6.99), a finely textured rice flour pudding flavoured with caraway and cinnamon, is topped with coconut, almonds and pistachios. Barely quivering under a fluff of cotton candylike halvah, and light dustings of dried rose petals, almonds and pistachios, Muhallebi ($6.99), a cornflour and milk pudding, gently flavoured with rosewater, melts. Sublime.
Nanaz Kitchen allows a glance at the breadth of Middle Eastern cuisines in a relaxed, welcoming way. With a menu that ranges from the wellknown to the not-often-seen — locally, at least — there’s plenty to enjoy.
Assessing food, atmosphere, service and prices. Dining Out restaurant reviews are based on unannounced visits to the establishments. Restaurants do not pay for any portion of the reviewer’s meal. Jasmine Mangalaseril is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as @cardamomaddict.