DINING OUT
Up for a good Laffa? There’s more than hummus among us as two popular restaurateurs tempt diners with Medi-Eastern dishes. by JUDY ALLEN
The Mezze Medley includes a sampling of dishes. Pictured clockwise from left are the tabouli, pickled beets and Harissa Carrot Salad.
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Many of you are probably familiar
with some of the dishes from the Mediterranean or Middle East — hummus, tabbouleh and falafel, for starters. But what about labneh, muhammara and shakshuka? The recently opened Laffa Medi-Eastern Restaurant & Bar in downtown’s bustling Brady Arts District is dishing up all of these good eats and more with popular restaurateurs Phil and Miranda Kaiser at the helm. I would buy virtually anything Miranda Kaiser is selling. The darling, feisty blond with the charming British accent — blink and you’ll miss her — has tempted Tulsans for many
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years with the eclectic menu at Cosmo Café in Brookside that she owns with her husband, Phil. Most recently, the pair opened Laffa, a hip spot honoring the best dishes from around the Mediterranean and Middle East. Miranda developed all of the recipes, with memories culminating from the 14 years she and Phil lived in Israel (quite a love story in itself, but more on that later). The restaurant’s namesake, “laffa,” is the Hebrew word for the bread found all over the region. It also is known as taboon bread, named for the clay-lined conical oven that is used to bake it fresh daily; the flatbread dough, similar
to India’s naan, is “slapped” on the wall of the oven to bake. Virtually every offering on the menu sounded delicious the night Tate and I visited, so a selection of mezze to start seemed appropriate. Mezze (met-zuh) is an assortment of appetizers, hot or cold, typically served together as either a start to a meal or as the meal itself. Laffa features more than a dozen mezze choices (any six for $14.99 or any three for $9.99) — all served with freshly slapped laffa bread. We chose the Harissa Carrot Salad (chunks of crisp-tender carrots tossed with cilantro, honey and harissa, a spicy north African paste), Anatolian Labneh (creamy yoghurt