Zaatar w Zeit: Launch party for lebanese fast food in Vancouver
This week, I was invited to attend Zaatar w Zeit’s preview event as they open their first location in Vancouver and North America!
Zaatar w Zeit is very popular in the Middle East with 70+ outlets across the world. They specialize in authentic Lebanese street food and have crafted a new menu just for Vancouver.
The space
Zaatar w zeit is located downtown right next to BCIT – a convenient location for students and downtown workers. The space is quite large with a grab & go section for drinks and snacks, comfortable lobby seating and booth seating deeper inside.
Food
I am not very familiar with Lebanese cuisine, but their menu is quite extensive. Ranging from salads and soups to flatbreads, wraps and specialty coffee and tea – there is a lot of healthy options for lunch and brunch.
Everything is made fresh daily when you order. Nothing is premade – even the grab & go area gets refilled every few hours in a day. The dough and flatbread they use is vegan-friendly and they have a lot of vegetarian options for you to choose from.
Make your own wrap!
As part of the launch event, they give us the fun activity of making our own wraps. Don’t worry – if you actually come in and order they are not going to have you make your own wrap lol.
We get to choose to make one of the following 3 wraps:
- Green falafel wrap
- Famous chicken wrap
- Halloumi bacon wrap
All 3 of these wraps are their top 3 menu items in the Middle East, but we decide to go with the chicken and bacon wrap because we always have a hard time choosing the vegetarian option as non-vegetarians.
They present us with a tray of ingredients:
The head chef teaches us how to make the wrap and cut it.
Mine is really ugly lol.
My boyfriend’s looks much better:
Both of the wraps taste good and they are actually quite filling. We split ours so we had half of each for variety and we were not hungry for more food after.
I expected the bacon to be large strips of bacon, but they are actually little bits sprinkled throughout the dough. This gives it a crunchy texture every bite.
The chicken one tastes better, personally. I think it might just be because there’s more stuff in it.
I tried their chips and they are spicy – Jalapeno flavoured! Some of the other things we tried on their demo table included this flatbread with a perfect egg on top:
And also we tried a meat-lovers flatbread, which is lighter than a meatlovers pizza.
Final thoughts
I enjoyed attending Zaatar w Zeit’s intimate launch party with a few fellow Vancouver foodies. The champagne and the grab & go drinks were a fun touch and made the environment feel more casual and open. The wrap tutorial was also quite interactive as we got a feeling of what happens when someone orders a wrap and how they prepare and make it.
The prices of their wraps and flatbreads range from $10-15. These are affordable prices for a lunch downtown. If you are vegan, vegeterian or have other dietary restrictions or preferences, this can be a go-to eatery for you.