KHOBZ
Origin: Egypt | Pronounce: Khobz with kh sound made in the back of the throat
“If California was an island in the eastern Mediterranean, what would it be like?” That’s Azhar Hashem’s vision for her restaurant, Tawla, where she is joined by Chef Joseph Magidow, formerly of Delfina. Tawla’s menu focuses on the home cooking of Greece, Turkey, the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, Egypt, and Jordan), and Iran. Nowhere is Azhar’s intention more felt than in the simplest of dishes on Tawla’s menu: the bread. “Khobz means ‘bread,’ and references the thin pita that people are used to here,” she says. “Ours is a little thicker, like a hybrid between a traditional Egyptian khobz, which is a Levantine-style dough coated with wheat bran, and a Parisian baguette,…