Paulius Musteikis
Falafel and hummus atop the lettuce bowl with craveworthy pickled cucumbers.
Naf Naf promotes itself cheerfully as “The Chipotle of Middle Eastern food.” This is a mantle other eateries are vying for too (just among Middle Eastern places, there’s Halal Guys, Naya Express and Roti Mediterranean Grill, none of which are in this market).
What does being “The Chipotle of” something mean? That you get to build your own meal with the help of counter staff? That the options for customization make it possible for the meal to fall somewhere on a spectrum between healthy and indulgent? That the food is generally pretty good and at times even quite good? That the parent company values quality and tries for ethical sourcing of its ingredients?
Naf Naf doesn’t make a point of where it sources its ingredients, but customers do create their own meals as they proceed along the counter. And as at Chipotle, the options are pretty darn good.
Naf Naf, born in 2009 in a former Taco Bell in Naperville, Ill., began as more of a sui generis Middle Eastern spot. It’s since expanded to 14 Chicagoland locations, with new sites in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Some of the Chicago locations boast a slightly larger menu than Madison; the newer outlets share a streamlined bill of fare. The menu is built on steak shawarma, chicken shawarma and falafel. Eat them atop a lettuce bowl or a rice bowl, or as a pita sandwich. Add this topping or that topping, hummus or baba ganouj. Have a side of fries or a bowl of lentil soup. That’s Naf Naf in a nutshell.
Happily, the falafel are top-notch. They’re fried super-crispy and retain their exterior crunch even after sitting in the assembly line warming tray. The interior is yielding without being mushy or mealy. In fact, the falafel is very similar to Banzo’s excellent version. Enough so that Banzo could start worrying, although you’re much more likely to get a Banzo falafel hot-crispy straight out of the fryer. Other than that, even a falafel fanatic would be hard-pressed to tell the two apart.
Add falafel to the salad bowl and top it with hummus (or a slightly smoky baba ganouj, equally good). Garnish it with chopped salad and the purple cabbage salad, pickles, and both tahini and the hot s’khug sauce — it’s a can’t-miss combo. (Heads up, the green s’khug sauce is hotter than it looks.) Though the base romaine itself is a little ragged and seemingly bred for sturdiness, adding the chopped salad and cabbage gives the bowl some snap. The tart pickles are a very nice addition — I’m calling them Israeli pickles, and where can I buy some? (Ziyad pickled cucumbers from Yue-Wah Oriental Foods on South Park Street are a decent facsimile.)
Any combo at Naf Naf will work — like a steak shawarma rice bowl, or steak in a pita sandwich. (The pita, which you can see being rolled into balls and patted out before being put into the oven, is obviously fresh, but too fluffy and white-bready. Still, when the schmear of baba ganouj and tahini soak into that fluffiness, you’re not going to leave it on your plate.)
The steak is dry, mostly lean, and not heavily spiced. The chicken (like the steak, it’s roasted on a vertical spit behind the counter) seems mostly based on dark meat. Naf Naf is generous with the portions, but spice will come mostly from your choice of sauce.
The weakest link at Naf Naf is the chips — greasy, soggy and chewy, while I was expecting crisp and crunchy.
What I’ll go back for is the lentil soup. This is not your hippie housemate’s severe brown lentil soup. It’s a sunny bright yellow (as if made with yellow split peas), left chunky. I’m still trying to tease out what spices are at play. It’s been too salty on some visits, but usually black pepper comes to the fore, with a slightly sweeter note underneath (cloves?). There’s something very appealing about this soup, comforting in the chill of fall, and worth it at $2.59 for a cup.
The flavor I missed most at Naf Naf was lemon. Why not offer lemon slices for diners to add their own?
Naf Naf is a fast-casual assembly line, no doubt about it. You can feel at times as if you’ve stumbled into an offshoot of Gordon Commons. It’s not Husnu’s. It’s not Mediterranean Cafe. And it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be Chipotle. And in that, Naf Naf holds up its end of the bargain.
Naf Naf Grill 555 State St., 608-286-1242, 11 am-10 pm daily, $3-$9
