Earlier than I am going to a restaurant for the primary time — meals truck or four-star — I do a search of their menu, web site and social media platforms. That is true of each private {and professional} outings. For the latter, I do a deeper dive, significantly when it’s a delicacies I’m not aware of.
Take, for instance, the time I reviewed Osh, Nashville’s first Uzbek restaurant. The place is Uzbekistan, and what’s the meals? And Edessa, the place the fare is Kurdish and Turkish. Earlier than eating at St. Vito Focacceria, I appeared up sfincione, the specialty at chef-owner Michael Hanna’s Sicilian place within the Gulch.
I don’t bear in mind how Galilee first caught my eye — their social media presence is minimal, and I’ve not seen any press. However nevertheless it arrived within the eating places file I preserve within the Scene folder on my pc, it piqued my curiosity, and in late April, 4 of us got down to uncover “The place the Nile Meets Nashville,” as its web site touts. That joyful convergence takes place at 2713 Murfreesboro Pike, “A Culinary Oasis in Antioch, TN!”
So, Egypt. What’s the meals? Not a clue. Even mates who traveled to Egypt had been hard-pressed to explain it. In line with Journey Meals Atlas, “Egyptian meals combines greens, beans, legume, lentils, onions, pasta, rice and cumin with Mediterranean influences.”
Koshary
A number of sources identify koshary (additionally koshari) as Egypt’s nationwide dish — a carb-lover’s nirvana with rice, pasta, vermicelli, chickpeas, lentils, onions and spices.
Kofta (a spiced mixture of floor beef and lamb cooked on skewers) is a staple, as are falafel and kabobs; rooster, lamb and liver are recurring proteins; eggplant and okra flip up in a number of dishes or flying solo, as do fava beans, together with in a sandwich. Talking of sandwiches, aish baladiis theEgyptian pita — a sourdough whole-wheat flatbread that bakes up puffy. Historically served at each meal, it can be made with refined flour, however entire wheat provides the substance that white misses.
The aish baladi is foundational to a highly regarded Egyptian road meals specialty — the hawawshi, a pita full of seasoned floor meat.
Loaded with that data, and locked into the tackle, we headed to Antioch’s culinary oasis — and drove previous it a number of instances, regardless of The Voice of Siri asserting our arrival at a car parking zone that didn’t look like residence to something however Good Shepherd Pharmacy and Joseph Cake. That’s the place.
The doorway to Galilee — marked by the massive, blue-lit letters “GYROS” — is slotted between Sam Bakery and Joseph Cake. It shares house (although not a kitchen) with Joseph Cake; one case holds adorned layer desserts and one other sheet pans full of Egyptian/Center Japanese desserts that will come from Sam. With nobody at Joseph’s counter, we may solely window-shop.
The naked tables and mismatched chairs are for Galilee’s clients; what the small house lacks in ambiance is overridden by attractive scents wafting from the kitchen and tantalizing meals pictures on the colourful overhead menu boards.
Hawawshi
These pictures — and the accompanying numbers on every dish — are key to ordering, which one does on the counter. We had been the one English audio system on web site all night time, and none of us converse Egyptian Arabic, so I pointed at pictures and used the numbers. On the counter man’s request, I directed my inquiries to his telephone, which had a language-translation app; he learn the written translation and replied into his telephone, which translated to English for me to learn. Genius.
We needed the specialties and the staples, so I ordered hummus, baba ganoush, bread (50 cents per plump pita!), koshary, hawawshi, lamb kabob, kofta meal, the half grilled rooster meal, eggplant and okra casserole — the final of which they had been sadly out of. Or happily, contemplating the amount of meals that arrived in no explicit order at our desk; or tables, since we needed to pull over one other four-top simply to carry all of the dishes.
We every acquired a small plastic plate and plastic cutlery for private use, after which we dug proper in, piling our plates with a few of every part, pulling quarters of heat bread from the basket.
Half grilled rooster meal
Every meal comes with yellow rice, a salad of frivolously dressed chunks of cucumber and tomato, sliced crimson onion and contemporary herbs, bread, tahini, pickles, pickled greens and, on request, a complete pickled jalapeño. I can’t recall which dish got here with the thimble of what we had been warned was “extremely popular,” however the ensuing hearth from slightly dab had me chugging desperately from the water bottle.
The bread is really distinctive, with a mushy inside and yeasty taste because of the sourdough, a considerable scoop for the baba ganoush and hummus.
The kofta had a foul night time — underflavored, overcooked and so dry that not even swathing it in tahini sauce helped. The lamb and the rooster — a leg quarter and breast — however, had been grilled good, tender, moist and sporting a pleasant char.
Hawawshi makes a smashing debut in my unofficial catalog of Spectacular Sandwiches of the World. Cumin, coriander, allspice, diced onion, garlic and inexperienced pepper season the bottom meat, which in cooking seeps fats into the bread, completed for a crisp by a flip on the flattop.
Koshary is centuries-old consolation in a bowl — also referred to as poor-man’s meals for its humble pantry staples. At Galilee, along with the lentils, rice and chickpeas, the pasta was spaghetti and ditalini, with one thing crunchy — probably fried onions. It’s served with a ramekin of tomato sauce and certainly one of vinegar, which — because it was demonstrated to us — ought to be stirred into what jogged my memory of my mom’s infinite repertoire of budget-stretching casseroles. Minus the cream-of-something soup.
Eggplant
Blended evaluations from our quartet of discerning diners — one (chunk) and performed for me, “extra please” from the carb-lover, meh from the opposite two.
It was the eggplant we couldn’t get sufficient of — actually — and had been all nonetheless raving about days later. Chunks of the meaty vegetable, pores and skin on, with olive oil and salt, chargrilled proper in entrance of the doorway, is simplicity at its most elegant. Don’t cross it by.
Nashville’s explosive wealth progress is inescapable. For my cash — which on this case was a grand whole of $97.05 — discovering connection by trendy expertise to translate historic foodways of Egypt and sit at a desk in a culinary oasis in Antioch is priceless.
