Vegan
Vegan at a Middle Eastern restaurant: what to ask about
Most of what determines whether a Middle Eastern dish works for vegans is not printed on the menu. Here is what is usually in there, and how to ask about it without an interrogation.
What catches people out
- Yoghurt in the aubergine dip
- Mutabbal frequently has yoghurt stirred through it, where baba ghanoush usually does not. The two names get used interchangeably, so the name alone will not tell you.
- Samneh in rice and pastry
- Clarified butter is the traditional fat for both. Many kitchens now use oil, which makes this worth asking rather than assuming either way.
- Yoghurt poured over hot dishes
- Fatteh and shish barak arrive under a yoghurt sauce that is part of the dish rather than a topping.
- Butter and honey in the sweets
- Baklava pastry is usually brushed with butter, and some syrups are made with honey rather than sugar.
Usually a good starting point
Chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic and oil. One of the few dishes on the menu where the traditional recipe has no animal product in it at all.
The white garlic sauce served with grills is usually just garlic, oil, lemon and salt — emulsified rather than made with egg, unlike mayonnaise.
Fava beans and olive oil. Filling, cheap and traditionally made without dairy.
What to actually say
One specific question is easier for everyone than three vague ones — for you and for the person answering.
- “Is there yoghurt in the mutabbal?”
- “Is the rice cooked in samneh or in oil?”
- “Is the garlic sauce made with egg?”
What Middle Eastern menus don’t print
Nobody is hiding anything. These are foundational ingredients that a Middle Eastern kitchen treats the way you treat salt — not an ingredient, a medium. That is exactly why they never appear in a description.
Far beyond hummus. It thickens the aubergine dips, it is the base of the tarator sauce poured over fish and falafel, it turns up in salad dressings, and it is the main ingredient in halva. Anyone avoiding sesame meets it in places the menu never mentions.
Frequently minced into kofta and kibbeh, and stirred through rice, where it does the work that butter would do elsewhere. It is why the mince tastes richer than beef mince usually does.
Muhammara, fattoush dressing and several braises. It reads as a sour-sweet depth rather than as fruit, so people rarely identify it.
Shish taouk is usually marinated in yoghurt with garlic and lemon, and the yoghurt cooks away — so a grilled chicken skewer that looks entirely dairy-free frequently is not.
The traditional cooking fat for rice, pastry and many stews. Restaurants vary — plenty use oil — which makes it a question rather than an assumption.
Recipes vary between restaurants and change without notice, so treat all of this as what to raise with the kitchen rather than a guarantee about any particular dish. The staff always have the final word.
TableSage reads menus using an AI language model, which gets things wrong sometimes.
Know which dishes to ask about.
Photograph the menu and it flags what is worth raising — including the ingredients that are never printed.