Acidic, garlicky, warm, and topped with just the right amount of spice and crunch (thanks to a few well-placed pine nuts), shish barak is a dish that deserves a spot much higher on your personal list of menu favorites. And luckily for all of us, chefs around the nation are happily serving it right now.
Shish barak and its seductive combination of ingredients is most certainly nothing new. It's a meal deeply rooted in tradition, dating back to the 14th century, likely originating in Persia with variations from Azerbaijan, Uzbek, and many more places putting their spin on things. But it remains a relatively novel dish to many in the U.S. However, it's starting to simmer in the best way possible in restaurant menus from coast-to-coast, thanks to a growing number of chefs eager to share shish barak's many charms.
It's already a bestseller at Ladino, a self-described "modern Mediterranean grill house" that opened in September 2022. But for chef Berty Richter, who grew up in Israel with a mother who has Turkish, Greek, and Bulgarian roots, the dish, which the restaurant makes in-house daily, offers something personal — a taste of home. "The idea [is] to pay tribute to all the cuisines of the Jewish route of migration," Richter says. His version comes stuffed with beef and lamb and is served in a cow milk yogurt enriched with lamb fat, sprinkled with smoked chili oil for just the right kick. "Lamb and yogurt is one of the best combinations ever," he says of the dish's nuanced balance of acids and fats.
“It’s a staple we know and love but don’t have very often because it’s such a laborious treat,” says Mona Leena, chef and owner of the Californian-Palestinian brunch and lunch mecca Lulu in Berkeley, CA. Traditionally, in Palestinian homes, “your aunties get together and make a bunch of shish barak dumplings and freeze them for the year,” Leena says. According to Leena, all that hard work is likely why you rarely see the dish on restaurant menus. But, when she first introduced the dish to her hungry patriots at a special evening meal last fall — her version combining lamb and pine nuts in a gelatinous lamb broth with kishik, a Lebanese yogurt soup — she knew she had to keep it on the menu forever. “People were licking the plate,” says Leena. “Customers won’t stop asking about it.”
Courtesy of Dagon
In New York City, Dagon, a Mediterranean restaurant that opened in early 2020, has had shish barak on the menu from the get-go. “We’ve been talking about iconic dishes from the Levantine region that we respect but want to put our stamp on, and we agreed that shish barak hit all the marks,” says chef and partner Ari Bokobza, whose father’s side of the family is from Israel. He decided the dish was too special to limit it to meat-eaters only, so in Dagon’s version, the dumplings are filled with mushrooms. Around them is warm yogurt foam spiced with cumin and coriander, and on top are crispy shallots and pine nuts. “We have one cook whose only job is to make them, and she makes them flawlessly.”
According to Bokobza, shish barak isn’t only delicious but also fun to eat and good-looking at that, thanks to a striking finish of black nigella seeds and green schug. “It has different textures. It’s herbaceous. It’s an umami bomb.” However, achieving textural and visual perfection wasn’t easy. “That was the most challenging dish to get right,” Bokobza recalls. “Anytime you add yogurt to heat, it gets temperamental — a lot of bad things can happen.” The team at Dagod suffered through the research phase, testing several versions until they finally nailed it. “We hugged it out and knew this was it.”
The dish, Richter says, “is different and a point of curiosity. There’s pasta in cream sauce — this is the Middle Eastern version.” But shish barak hardly needs a reference, nor does it really require any help becoming a hit once again. Leena adds, “It’s so savory and warming and soft, the ultimate Arabic comfort food.”
This article was written by Flora Tsapovsky from Food & Wine and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
