Throughout the 2010s, I tended bar on W 26th St (RIP The Hog Pit). While I often relied on the bar’s food to fuel me through long and late nights, when I wanted to venture outside of chicken wings, I often struggled to find a quick meal in the area that actually hit the spot. If only Lava Shawarma on 23rd and 5th had been open those days.
One of my favorite foods I forget I love is koshari, the national food of Egypt. It’s made up of pasta, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions, spicy tomato sauce and rice. It was the first thing I tried when in Cairo many years back, but only just had koshari in New York for the first time at Lava Shawarma.
Props to the employees: I was one of those pesky people who called 30 minutes before they closed, asking if I could quickly come by for some koshari or wait another day. They warmly said to come on by as they were still open and it wasn’t a problem. I showed up with two friends, and as someone who worked in restaurants and bars for the majority of her 20s, I am hyper-aware how annoying it is for customers to show up shortly before closing, but the kind employees at Lava Shawarma didn’t let us feel that at all. Instead, they encouraged us to order more than just koshari, so we did.
We also ordered a lamb dish called mansaf, two biryani rice bowls and knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert. When we saw they had the “Dubai chocolate bar,” we got one of those, too.
While I had assumed the restaurant was Egyptian because they served koshari, mansaf is the national dish of Jordan. I looked around to see that mansaf wasn’t the only nod to Jordan. The red cloth that lined the seats is an ode to traditional Jordanian bedouin blankets.
Mansaf at Lava Shawarma is made the traditional way. It’s a lamb shank cooked in fermented dried yogurt, giving it a milky appearance. It’s served bone-in and, when done right, the meat falls right off as you go to pick it up. The hefty portion of meat is served atop rice and alongside shrak, a paper-thin flatbread, which is best used as a vessel for picking up the meat. Here, the lamb is also topped with slivered toasted almonds, parsley, and served alongside more yogurt sauce. The lamb was tender as ever, and my friends and I were able to pull the bone right out.
As for my beloved koshari, it was presented in a neat manner at Lava Shawarma. It was evenly divided in three corners of chickpeas, fried onions, and lentils. Just underneath you can see some elbow pasta and spaghetti peeping out. A fair portion of spicy tomato sauce is served on the side.
You could go for a cute civilized experience, where maybe you’ll dip a little bit of the chickpea lentil mixture into the sauce, if you want the real deal, you must add the tomato sauce and aggressively mix everything together. The result is a beautiful mesh of ingredients, held together by the tang and zest of the spicy tomatoes. It might sound strange to mix rice and pasta and lentils and chickpeas, but it comes together in a hearty, filling dish, and is simply fun to eat, especially with those pops of fried onions.
The biryani dishes were large in portion. One of the rice bowls had chunks of grilled chicken, and the other had a hard-boiled egg. While all of the savory dishes were incredible, no Middle Eastern feast is complete without knafeh, a cheesy, nutty pastry with origins in Nablus, Palestine. Knafeh is almost like a cheese-filled baklava; it’s honey-soaked, covered in shredded phyllo — or kadayif — and pistachio crumbles. At Lava Shawarma, it’s filled with goat cheese. It’s an ideal dessert for those who love sweets with a hint of savory tang from the cheese.
We also saw they had Dubai chocolate bars, so my original plans to come in for a quick koshari went further off track when I simply had to get one of those, too. Originally created by Emirati-owned Fix Dessert Chocolatier, the Dubai chocolate bar is made with milk and white chocolate, filled with pistachio cream, tahini and toasted kadayif. It quickly became a viral sensation, with many TikTok users recreating the decadent candy at home (I may or may not have created one at home last year on my birthday). While you can only get the real thing in Dubai, you can get a pretty good knockoff at Lava Shawarma, and any bar that’s filled with tahini, pistachio, and crunchy kadayif is an easy win for me.
So, if you’re looking to change up your takeout order in the Flatiron District, or simply want to try some national dishes that are often only found either in their respective countries or far enclaves of Queens and Brooklyn, make sure to check out Lava Shawarma on W 23rd Street.
- Address: 12 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10010 (other locations at 57 Clinton St, New York, NY 10002; 226 Thompson St, New York, NY 10012; 1640 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10128; and 374 86th St, Brooklyn, NY 11209)
- Phone: 646-398-9800
- Hours: Monday-Thursday 10 a.m.-11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.-1 a.m.
- Prices: Lava Mezze Appetizers $7; Lava Side Orders $1-$14.99; Lava Sandwich $13; Lava Mix Grill $16-$49; Vegan Plates $14-$17; Burgers $13-$17; Salads $13; Soups $7-$8; Breakfast $8-$14; Dessert $6-$10
- Takeout and delivery available; no reservations.
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