14 July 25th-July 31st, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | salty pickle, a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon and samoon — pillowy Iraqi bread right out of the oven. For those unfamiliar with Iraqi cuisine, there’s a lot to take in. Fortunately, on the weekends, you can do it all at once. A Baghdad-style buffet On Saturdays and Sundays, Eat & Go hosts a cozy little buffet — breakfast from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and dinner from 2-5 p.m. — combining a rotating selection of the regular menu with special dishes that only appear on the weekend. Fresh fruit joins a spread of dips and salads, alongside a mountain of fattoush — crisp greens and vegetables with fried flat- bread chips. The lentil soup fills a commercial tureen, in case that first little cup isn’t enough. And when you pop open the chafing dishes, you’ll find a trove of sneaky delights that aren’t listed on the menu. Eat & Go’s dolmas are exceptional, whether you get the Syrian or the Iraqi variety. One of the cooks is Syrian, so some- times you’ll find a style more Phoenicians will recognize — delicately spiced rice wrapped in tiny cigar shapes with tart pickled grape leaves. On other days, Iraqi dolmas make an appearance. Filled with both meat and rice, more aggressively spiced and slowly stewed in an intensely sour sauce of tomato and fresh lemon, they utilize not just grape leaves as wraps but also onion petals, whole peppers and large chunks of hollowed-out zucchini and eggplant. What Ghaleb and Naoosh know as kubba, most Phoenicians know as kibbeh, but Eat & Go’s version is a very different dish than the crispy fried torpedoes found at most shawarma shops. These are spher- ical, varied in size and composed of spiced ground beef and almonds surrounded by a bulgur wheat dough. But rather than fried, they’re slowly stewed, either in a sultry fresh tomato sauce (kubba saray) or — in another Syrian spin — a tart and bright warm yogurt sauce seasoned with mint (kubba labanieh). These kubba are mellow and comforting, a hearty stew rather than a crispy snack, and because Ghaleb takes the time to process fresh whole tomatoes, you can taste a little extra sunshine in the kubba saray. Sticky sweets Don’t overlook dessert. Naoosh comes from a pastry family, and it shows in the three or four trays of sweets the restaurant offers every day. Eat & Go’s baklava is some of the finest I’ve tasted in town — crisp, overflowing with fresh nuts and plied with plenty of honey and sugar, but not so much that it turns into a heavy, sticky mess. And the pistachio burma, a cylindrical variant thereof, is equally excellent. If sticky sweet is your style, focus on the awamat. Chunks of fried dough that resemble abbreviated churros are dunked in a vat of scented sugar syrup, an exercise in unashamed excess. I personally prefer the zalabia, a cousin of South Asian jalebi — gram flour batter drizzled into hot oil to produce a crispy curlicue, similarly swabbed with an abundance of sticky syrup. As families roll in for a meal and some sweets, it’s clear that Eat & Go has garnered a solid following. Why the uniquely Iraqi dishes remained an in-the- know secret for so long, I don’t care to speculate. But Ghaleb and Naoosh have noted — with pride — the interest in their very specific regional cuisine, and they’re working to make it more accessible. Naoosh is developing a revamped menu that leans away from the Mediterranean catch-all and deeper into the couple’s Iraqi cuisine, converting off-menu specials into regular items. I hope it snares a broader audience. As I sink into a $9 shawarma wrap, the line at the local fast food chain across the parking lot is six cars deep. Park the car, people. Walk through the door. You just never know. Eat & Go Mediterranean Cuisine 4354 W. Thunderbird Road, Glendale 602-595-1522 eatngorestaurant.com 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Starters $5-$8; Wraps and sandwiches $8-$10; Plates $13-$24. More than ‘Mediterranean’ from p 12 Try the sweets. (Photo by Jacob Tyler Dunn) Ali Ghaleb and Mays Naoosh came to Phoenix in 2016. (Photo by Jacob Tyler Dunn)