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“From my generation on, it’s been chicken. “When I was a kid, shawarma was just lamb,” Hudson says.

In recent years, chicken has become a major meat in Middle Eastern street food. Lamb and other meats are often cooked as kebabs on skewers or as vertical rotisserie–cooked shawarma. There is meat in many of the region’s recipes, but pork is not one of them due to halal and kosher laws. Vegetables, spices, herbs, and grains make up a huge part of Middle Eastern cuisine. Many Middle Eastern dishes rely on chickpeas and other legumes, because “they are very inexpensive, an easily grown agricultural product, and very versatile,” says Johnson & Wales’ Pal. Falafel is served at 4.6 percent of these units, a 40 percent jump over the same period, while tahini and harissa sauces have also shown strong growth. limited-service restaurants, a 24 percent increase during the past four years. Hummus is mashed or puréed chickpeas with garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini.Īccording to food industry market research firm Datassential, hummus appears on the menu at 12.7 percent of U.S. They are often added to the menu as one more way to provide vegetarian or vegan offerings.įalafel is typically made with ground chickpeas, onions, parsley, garlic, spices, and other ingredients, rolled into a ball and typically deep fried. Of course, hummus and falafel have become mainstream in America and are served by many restaurants that don’t have any ties to Middle Eastern cuisine. “We are 100 percent Middle Eastern,” he says, adding that the restaurant chain’s menu includes many items he grew up with in Israel-flavors influenced by the cuisine of immigrants brought to that country from elsewhere in the region. Mediterranean is something that is approachable.”įor Sahar Sander, cofounder of Chicago-based Naf Naf Grill, which has 30 units in five states, there is nothing Mediterranean about Middle Eastern’s signature items, including falafel, hummus, shawarma, baba ghanoush, and specific sauces and spice combinations. “I came to the realization it was a marketing thing. “We did a lot of research, and what kept sticking out was how many restaurants represented themselves as Mediterranean when they were not,” he says. Tamim Shoja noticed this trend when he and his cousin were planning to launch the fast-casual kebab eatery SKWR Kabobline in Washington, D.C., last year. People generally understand what that means,” she says. “Mediterranean is a much more popular selling point. Leila Hudson, associate professor of modern Middle East culture and political economy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, considers the use of “Mediterranean” as a catch-all term as “mostly a marketing decision” when considering the American restaurant scene. That in part has to do with history, wars, and cultures rising and falling. Many foods are shared by the Middle East and other Mediterranean regions, including flatbreads, roasted skewered meats, and filled dough items, he adds.

“It’s like saying the difference between lo mein and pad thai is indistinguishable,” says Neath Pal, a chef who teaches international cuisine and several other courses at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. In some ways, identifying Middle Eastern cuisine as Mediterranean is similar to lumping the wide array of Asian cuisine under the Chinese banner, or various Latino foods as Mexican.

While there are certainly similarities, the culinary traditions of the Middle East-from Egypt in the west and Turkey in the north to Iran in the east and Yemen in the south-embody tastes and textures different from those of the Mediterranean foods of Europe and North Africa. But the region’s cuisine is often misidentified as simply Mediterranean food. The Middle East makes up a large swath of the globe, spanning parts of three continents.