While there are myriad Middle-Eastern and Southeastern-European restaurants in the Greater Baltimore area, and thus many places to go for a fix of hummus, kebabs, and shawarma, they tend to be Greek (Samos) or Lebanese (Lebanese Taverna), rather than Palestinian. If you’re looking for Palestinian food, though, you might want to drive to Elkridge and check out Zaman Grill and Shawarma.
Zaman, which opened in the corner of an Elkridge shopping center about six months ago, is owned and operated by Palestinians—longtime Marylanders who wanted to bring a taste of their country’s food here—and has a veteran Palestinian chef who moved to Maryland about a year ago. The menu has classic food of the region: hummus, tabbouleh, falafel, fattoush, grilled kebabs and kofta, and shawarma (all the meat is halal) from two hefty rotisserie grills in the big, light-filled kitchen in the back.
There are also harder-to-find dishes, like the roasted red-pepper dip muhammara; bowls of foul, or stewed fava beans, swirled with olive oil; and shish tawook, skewers of marinated chicken. And on weekend mornings, there is masbahah—a breakfast dish of chickpeas “swimming” in tahini that famed cookbook author Paula Wolfert once described as “deconstructed hummus”—and shakshuka, an addictive dish of stewed, spiced tomato sauce topped with poached eggs and a confetti of fresh herbs.
The must-order muhammara is finely ground and zapped with pomegranate molasses, while the tabbouleh is a brilliant green collage of parsley, mint, bulgur, and tomatoes. It’s more herb garden than salad, making it a terrific accompaniment to the meats.
The kabobs are deeply flavorful and excellently cooked—particularly the lamb kabobs and kofta—and paired with roasted tomatoes, onions, and more herb confetti, as well as the thick garlic sauce called toum. (Ask for extra, and if you have leftovers, make sure you get more to-go, as the stuff elevates pretty much anything.) The pita, however, comes in anemic, store-bought stacks, so maybe spring for an order of pita chips, which arrive loaded with an extremely generous amount of za’atar.
Outside the small dining room fronting the counter, there’s an even larger space—an enclosed, windowed patio that is an excellent place to enjoy your feast during warmer weather.
Zaman does a strong takeout business, but it’s more fun to eat there and chat with the young man helming the counter—the son of one of the owners, who translated questions into Arabic for the Palestinian chef who makes the hummus.
Why is the hummus so good, we wanted to know. He pointed toward a counter in the back of the kitchen, past cooks working the rotisseries, upon which sat a machine about the size of a large crockpot. It was a $6,000 blender that could mix at a speed of about 4,500 spins per minute. It was this that produced the hummus, mixing only four ingredients—chickpeas, Lebanese tahini, lemon juice, and salt—into a finely textured, impossibly smooth paste. The garlic and olive oil went not into the fancy blender, but into the well spooned center of the finished hummus.
Hummus is one of those dishes that is ubiquitous, found in every Middle-Eastern restaurant, stocking whole aisles in grocery stores, but it is often only mediocre, even if you go to the trouble of boiling dry chickpeas yourself to make it at home. I have done this, but now I’ll just drive to Elkridge.
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