Nuba was the very first restaurant I wrote about on Ethnic Eats and it was one of my go-to recommendations for healthy ethnic food when the Vancouver Sun interviewed me last year. So it was an obvious choice for a Middle Eastern pick. I’m a fan.

In the time since, they’ve expanded to two “cafe” locations and their loungey downstairs restaurant in Gastown which was packed when we tried to get a mid-week 7 PM reservation. Turns out Vancouverites were hungry for something more than donair and falafel stands.

One of my favorite vegetable dishes – maybe even in the city – is “Najib’s Special”. Roasted cauliflower with sea salt and lemon and served with tahini combines the sweet, salt, tart and tangy flavours into utter deliciousness. I have no idea who Najib is but this is the best cauliflower you’ll ever have.

Despite my favorite menu item being a vegetable, I hadn’t remembered that such a significant portion of the menu was vegetarian, nor that the menu itself was so limited. It seemed as though the menu was smaller than any of us had remembered and in fact, even the one they have online currently is more varied.

But no matter, we stocked up on a variety of appetizer-sized mezze. We had the fattoush salad and the fire-grilled halumi cheese – a gorgeous salty dish that’s easily another fave – and mjadra, which is a perfectly decent lentil spread served with pita. But the chicken shish tawook was so dry as to be inedible and was abandoned in favour of lamb. Both the baked lamb kibbeh sainieh – spiced meatballs – and the grilled lamb popsicles with hummus (unfortunately a special for the evening and not on their regular menu) were so good that we had to order repeats.

Another option to ordering piece-meal would be to get the platter which seems to come with one of everything you’d want to try.

Photos by Matt Walters.

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Nuba
207-B West Hastings Street, Vancouver (+ various)

Photo Credit: ecstaticist.

So I’ve dedicded to start a new project for dining in 2010. The tagline of this site is “Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver” and so instead of of traipsing around Vancouver’s culinary delights in the random way I have been for the last (almost) 2 years, I am going to present my finds country by country.

I still have a bit of a backlog of reviews, so I may post those interspersed with the project and if I feel really keen, I may even post some recipes.

First stop on the grand tour: North America. Got any favorites you’d like to recommend?

You get in and you get out. There’s not a lot of room, so people stand around outside eating hungrily (especially late at night) and the deconstructed shawarma plates that are often available at other Lebanese places are not on the menu here. It’s probably just as well, because walking down the street trying not to spill hot sauce out of your wrap is hard enough, but well worth it.

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Babylon Cafe
708 Robson Street, Vancouver

A tiny, but crazy-busy shawarma place on Robson Street, Falafel Maison is great destination for a quick, healthy downtown lunch. The lineup is often out the door at lunch, but they have an efficient system down and it rarely takes long to cycle back out again, along with a smile and a kind word.  That’s the benefit of a family-run business and there aren’t very many left downtown anymore. As I mentioned, the shop is tiny. There are only a few seats with a couple more outside, but the majority of customers don’t stay in anyways.

The Falafel sandwich is great for $4.75 but the Shawarma sandwich is even better for $5.75. Both have hummous, yogurt, lettuce, hot sauce (if you want it), and tabbouleh wrapped up in a pita and while the basic taste is pretty similar, the falafels are soft and flavourful without being greasy and the shaved chicken in the shawarma is marinated to perfect tanginess. Then there are also other ways of plating the same items, i.e. – Shawarma on a plate ($6.25) with salad and rice, etc. Wrapped up in paper is the way to go in my opinion, but the portions are generous regardless and they’re happy to pack up whatever you order.

It’s cash only, but the owners seem very forgiving (another yay for family-run). Today when I was there the customer in front of me managed to miss all 3 of the “CASH ONLY” signs and they just told him to pay next time. Nice.

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Falafel Maison

516 Robson Street, Vancouver

Lunching after the Christmas holidays for me requires adding in a couple of factors to the equation. Namely cheap, healthy and a little more interesting than turkey sandwiches. That means Nuba, whose Seymour Street location  I’ve been meaning to check out for months.

I ordered the Najib’s Special ($8.50) cauliflower tossed with lemon and sea salt and browned in the oven. Sort of like what’s pictured here, except the meal version also comes with tabbouleh, salad, hummus, organic pita, and a choice of organic brown rice or roasted potatoes. I chose the potatoes (mmmm, potatoes! even after Christmas there’s still no contest there) but the chef accidentally made rice, so I got both. YAY. Except that means that with the Fattoush Salad ($7.50) my friend and I were splitting, we had a huge pile of food on our tiny table.

No matter. The cauliflower, tangy and tart and dipped in organic tahini, melted in my mouth and disappeared effortlessly. Likewise, the chunks of olive-oil drizzled potatoes tasted spectacularly good both on their own and wrapped in a make-shift pita sandwich with some greens and a smear of hummus. Oh it was so good! All of the flavours balance perfectly and the emphasis on organic ingredients really shines through. By the time I had eaten a couple of bites of palate-cleansing salad (mixed greens, pita chips, tomato, cucumber, green onion in a homemade garlic-lemon-herb dressing), I was stuffed to the brim and making contented murmuring noises.

Nuba’s a tiny place and fills up fast but somehow still manages to feel friendly and cozy even with the polished concrete floors and bare walls. And come summertime I’ll be more than happy to pick up a wrap to go and eat in the nearby park.

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Nuba
1206 Seymour Street (@ Davie), Vancouver