At Pita Palace and Damascus Gate, wholesome and delicious meet in Middle Eastern food
Casual Eats
What excellent timing. Just as diners are seeking out wholesome meals and looking for more vegan and vegetarian options (at least part of the time, or for at least some diners in their party), new Middle Eastern restaurants have sprung up in Milwaukee.
There, you’ll find dishes with exquisitely seasoned meats, along with plant-based dishes that more than satisfy taste buds. Carnivores and vegans happily can eat side by side, and diners seeking more grains, vegetables and healthy fats like olive oil can find what they’re looking for.
Besides, the food is just flat-out delicious.
Pita Palace
Pita Palace Mediterranean Cuisine on Layton Avenue isn’t kidding around; it does look a little palatial. It has to be Milwaukee’s swankiest counter-service restaurant.
There are chandeliers and decorative columns, granite on counters and 40 or more tables that twinkles when it catches the light, and tile to cover the considerable expanse of floor (the restaurant can seat 175 or more). The owners, who also operate Al-Yousef Supermarket in Oak Creek, put quite a lot into transforming this building, formerly a sports bar and chain restaurant.
I love the food from the deli counter at Al-Yousef but have wished that the market had a few seats. When the owners opened Pita Palace in summer, my problem was solved. (A second, smaller location, Pita Palace Express, recently opened for takeout only in Riverwest, at 2713 N. Bremen St.; it has more than half the same menu items.)
The Layton dining room is a comfortable place to sit after you order at the counter and wait for your food to be brought to the table. First-timers, you’ll want to find a copy of the menu near the entry and take a seat while you look it over. There’s much to consider.
For an appetizer to start dinner or for an entire meal of mezze, Pita Palace has 20 or so hot and cold shareable plates. One night my companion and I made plate after plate of mezze our dinner; Pita Palace just has too many good ones. Some of my favorites:
Fattoush ($5.99), the salad of chopped romaine with cucumber, onion, toasted bits of shrak (the large, thin flatbread) and more red bell pepper than tomato when I had it, smart for this time of year. Its savory-sweet dressing was its crowning glory.
Hummus as a silky bed for ful mudammas ($5.99), the warm fava-bean mash, splashed with a lavish amount of olive oil and garnished with parsley and green chile sauce. Like many of the shareable plates, it’s served with fresh, tender pita.
Hummus again, this time topped with shavings of beef shawarma from the vertical rotisserie ($9.99) — or chicken, your choice. The meat is juicy, with crusty browned bits here and there, which is as delightful as it sounds.
Arayes, a pita that’s stuffed with cheese ($3.99) or seasoned ground beef ($4.99) and baked until crisp.
Cucumber with yogurt ($5.99). Thick, rich, tangy yogurt. I may never go back to my own sour cream cucumber salad again.
Muttabel ($5.99), a chilled, garlicky mix of smoky eggplant with bits of raw bell pepper, garnished with chile sauce, parsley, olive oil and sumac.
Chicken wings ($5.99 for six, $9.99 for 12) that were charred on the grill. They tasted like summer on a particularly horrid March day — it was the right plate at the right time.
Assorted sandwiches ($4.99 to $10.99) include Arabic chicken or beef shawarma served with great fries, crisp outside and fluffy within. Among its other virtues, Arabic-style shawarma, which is served on shrak and sliced into portions, is tidy to eat and easy to share.
Main dishes highlight Pita Palace’s top-notch skills with meat, all of which is halal. The grilled lamb chops ($15.99 for four, with rice, hummus and Arabic salad) were cooked to medium, leaving them juicy and tender. They’re easily among the best in town.
Another entrée, roasted chicken ($12.99 a half, $19.99 whole), was moist under its browned skin; like everything on the menu here, it makes a substantial plate, with baba ghanouj, pickles, hummus, rice and bread on the side. (Pita Palace also has a family menu that starts at $45.99 for platters that serve four to five.)
Watch the daily specials for plates that delve deeper into Middle Eastern cuisines, such as Palestinian and Jordanian. On Fridays and Saturdays, that means mansaf — tender lamb on the bone with rice and a rich, tangy sauce of fermented, dried yogurt, and more richness in the way of toasted almonds.
It can be tricky to be there at the right time for specials; on Sundays, makloba tends to sell out early. (Makloba in Arabic means upside-down; the dish of chicken, vegetables and rice is flipped upside-down when served.)
It wouldn’t hurt to call ahead to check if the day’s specials are ready when you are, but there’s no shortage of delicious foods waiting on the regular menu.
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PITA PALACE
789 W. Layton Ave.
(414) 988-8100
Fare: Middle Eastern, with Palestinian and other specials
Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Prices: Small plates, $2.49-$9.99; sandwiches, $4.49-$10.99; entrees, $9.99-$19.99
Parking: Adjacent lot
Wheelchair access: Yes, at entry and restrooms
Payment: MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover
Of special note: Vegetarian and vegan items; halal meat; warm-weather patio seating; takeout; delivery (by the restaurant and third-party delivery); children’s menu, high chairs; catering; semi-private room for 35-40 people; Wi-Fi
Reservations: Accepted for parties of 40 or more
Damascus Gate
Rice pudding carries the scent of rosewater at Damascus Gate on Mitchell Street. That sweet, floral flavor is a hallmark of the Syrian version of the dessert.
Damascus Gate is Milwaukee’s only Syrian restaurant, although it might not be the first. Milwaukee had a Little Syria neighborhood in the early 20th century, stretching from the western edge of downtown to the near west side, old Milwaukee Journal files show.
The first Syrians were said to have arrived in 1897, at a time when Syria more broadly meant the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond. Most of Milwaukee’s Syrians were from Lebanon, and a 1932 Journal article detailed what it called an Arabian restaurant with a Syrian chef at 601 W. Wells St. By 1945, another article says, the restaurant was gone and many of the shops and residents had dispersed to other areas of Milwaukee.
That’s all to say that Milwaukee is still welcoming Syrians. Damascus Gate, where the main cooks overseeing the kitchen are Syrian, opened in early January, and Milwaukee is responding — the restaurant was busy each of several times I dropped in.
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Damascus Gate has table service, but the restaurant is casual — that rice pudding ($2.49) flavored with rosewater and covered with coconut and pistachio is served in a plastic container.
The restaurant’s menu is fairly brief (although the catering menu is more expansive). It lists a grilled meat platter of two skewers’ worth of ground beef and lamb kefta kebabs, a grilled chicken platter of two skewers’ worth of chicken chunks, a mixed grill (all $12.99), and a family-sized mixed grill of six skewers each of kebabs and chicken ($59.99), all with rice or fries and vegetables.
The kefta kebabs were excellent; the chicken ran the gamut — a few dry or barely done pieces among others that were just right. In any case, ask for the restaurant’s own hot sauce to dab on your lunch or dinner.
And there are three sandwiches, chicken, kefta kebab and falafel, wrapped in shrak with lettuce and pickles for crunch and seasoned with tahina dressing.
But Damascus Gate has about a dozen mezze, smaller plates to share. Get one before your main course, or make a meal of them (the menu lists a couple of combinations, or come up with your own).
Whatever you do, if you eat meat, have the kibbeh ($4.99 for two, $8.99 for four). They’re perfect. A thin, even shell based on cracked wheat is filled with meat and rolled until the ends are pointed and the middle round. They’re fried crisp, a double pleasure of flavor and texture.
And if you don’t eat meat, relish the mousakaa ($5.99), more like the ratatouille found at France’s end of the Mediterranean than the Greek moussaka closer to Syria. The room-temperature dish marries grilled eggplant with tomato and green pepper. That the dish tasted slightly different each time I had it suggested that different cooks were putting their own spin on it.
Certainly, you should have fatayer, savory Syrian hand pies ($2.99 apiece). Fresh spinach seasoned with a beguiling heat is tucked into a large triangle of plush yeasted pastry; an open, crimped pie holds a lightly tangy cheese filling.
Many of the mezze or the entrées will be classics familiar to anyone who’s dined at Middle Eastern restaurants before. (Or, for that matter, other restaurants that have latched on to Middle Eastern dishes such as hummus, baba ganouj or tabbouleh.) The catering menu goes beyond those standards, an employee said, and the cooks make even more Middle Eastern dishes by request for parties, for diners who seek out beloved flavors.
DAMASCUS GATE
807 W. Historic Mitchell St.
(414) 810-3561
Fare: Syrian and other Middle Eastern mezze, entrées and sandwiches
Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Prices: Shareable small plates, $2.99-$5.99 ($16.99 and $18.99 for combos); sandwiches, $6.99-$9.99; entrées, $12.99 ($59.99 for family size)
Parking: On street
Wheelchair access: Yes, at entry and restrooms
Payment: MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, and Apple Pay and Google Pay
Of special note: Vegetarian and vegan items; halal meat; takeout; third-party delivery; high chairs; catering, including off-menu Middle Eastern dishes with minimum three days’ notice
Reservations: Accepted
Contact Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or contact her through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.