(Top) Fresh-made pitas, hummus and tabouli. (Above) Falafels. Photos by Christy Simmons.

I have recently come to realize that there’s a hidden gem in Murfreesboro that I had no knowledge of. There is a little store with a bright yellow awning in a strip mall on Memorial Boulevard, right across the street from O’Charleys. I drove past it all the time, thinking it was nothing more than a convenience store. It used to be a convenience store; now it is a Middle Eastern grocery with a small café in the back.

When I was told of the existence of the café, I figured it was just another gyro joint catering to Americans who like to think they are eating ethnic food without actually having to eat ethnic food. I mean, it’s in the back of a convenience store! They probably serve gyros alongside microwavable burritos and two-week-old hotdogs on rotating skewers. I am so pleased to inform you that I was wrong. So wrong. This place is amazing. The only thing I regret about my experience was that I had gone this long without knowing this was available.

This café is Saudi Arabian—not Greek—and they cook all the food in the Shami style, which means that the recipes are from the region that includes Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. All that means to me is that the food is authentic, which is my biggest criteria in a good ethnic restaurant.

My family started with the following appetizers: hummus—a dip made from ground chickpeas, garlic and tahini; and fresh tabouleh—a salad made with chopped parsley, cracked bulgar, tomatoes and lemon juice. This was served with fresh-made pita bread. Yes, I said fresh-made. They make  everything here: Pita bread, tahini sauce, even their yogurt, are all made fresh daily.

We also sampled their falafels, little balls of ground chickpeas and fava beans fried and served with tahini sauce, and their fattir, a bread dough stuffed with either meat or cheese, folded and baked. We had the chicken fattir, which had curry and warm spices throughout; in a word, delicious.

Chicken shawarma

When it came to the entrees, we asked just to be given a sample of everything they had available that day. They have things like their baked chicken on a daily basis and then they have other specials that change daily, and I was told that sometimes they add an extra entrée if something sounds particularly good that day (see below for a list of the regular daily specials rotation). Since I went on a Tuesday, they also had kufta, a sort of meatloaf with spices like cumin, cardamom and cinnamon, topped with sliced potatoes and tomatoes and baked. We enjoyed that and the baked chicken, which is marinated overnight in a special spice blend and then dry-rubbed before it goes in the oven. Both dishes are served with saffron rice. We also tried the chicken shawarma, a sandwich with marinated chicken, grilled to order and rolled up with pickles, lettuce, tomatoes and homemade garlic sauce in a soft flatbread.

After eating, I wandered around the store to look at the offerings there. Being an avid cook, I was delighted to see things that I thought would be near-impossible to get in Murfreesboro without having them shipped to me from someplace else. Rose and orange blossom waters, bags of whole cardamom pods, ghee (clarified butter), sheep’s milk cheeses … all this and more can be found there. They even have a whole section of European candy, which includes some of the candy bars I fell in love with while in London, and some delicious Italian chocolate hazelnut wafer cookies that I hadn’t been able to find anywhere.

Are you a hookah aficionado? They’ve got you covered in that department as well, with gorgeous hookahs and any flavor of shisha tobacco you could want.

The last things of note regarding this place is that there is a drive-thru that you can use to get food or anything else in the store if you are in a hurry. They also cater any event, big or small—you can even get a whole stuffed lamb, cooked on a spit.

Daily Entrée Rotations:
Monday: Lamb Stew with Green Beans or Okra
Tuesday: Kufta
Wednesday: Stuffed Cornish Hen
Thursday: Fried Tilapia
Friday: Mansaf (yogurt soup with lamb, rice, potatoes and pine nuts)
Saturday: Chicken Biryani
Sunday: Breakfast

Kufta