Sometimes the road home begins with a single bite.
It starts with flat warm dough beneath the fingertips, za’atar stirred into olive oil and sesame seeds releasing their perfume in the oven. These familiar flavors inspired Mohammad Atieh and his brother-in-law, chef Alaa Al Darhamda, to create Al Manakeesh — a place where the food of their heritage could carry others, if only for a moment, back to Palestine.
That feeling now welcomes guests at the restaurant’s newly opened location on Crooks Avenue in Paterson.
Behind the counter, rounds of soft dough are rolled and flattened to order. Fingertips press small indentations into the surface, creating a place for olive oil and za’atar to settle before the bread enters the oven. Moments later, it emerges warm and fragrant, its edges lightly crisp and its center tender.
The word za’atar refers both to an aromatic herb related to thyme and to the beloved seasoning blend made with dried herbs, sesame seeds, sumac and salt. No two family mixtures are exactly alike. One may be more herbal, another more tart or nutty. Each carries the preference of a household and, often, the touch of the person who prepared it.
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Mixed with olive oil and spread across warm dough, za’atar becomes one of the region’s most enduring breakfasts.
Manakeesh — the plural of man’ousheh — is humble food, but never insignificant. Across Palestine and the Levant, it has long been part of the rhythm of daily life. It is the bread carried to school in the morning, folded around cheese or za’atar, and eaten on the way to work. At home, it is placed in the center of the table beside tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, mint, labneh and glasses of hot tea.
Bread is torn. Plates are passed. Conversation begins.
These are the meals that quietly shape a childhood: the sound of dough being worked, the warmth of bread wrapped in paper, and familiar voices gathering around the morning table.
Darhamda grew up with those memories outside Ramallah, where his family raised and prepared much of what they ate. As a young man, he learned the craft of manakeesh in a Ramallah bakery. When he later came to the United States, he found a large Arab community, yet he missed the unmistakable flavors of home.
His dream was simple: to create food powerful enough to return a person, even for a moment, to Palestine.
Together, Atieh and Darhamda shaped Al Manakeesh around that longing. Atieh helped develop the business and its welcoming spirit, while Darhamda became the culinary and creative force behind the menu. Their original concept has since grown into a franchise, carrying the tastes and traditions of Palestine into new communities.
For Abdul Hamdan, bringing Al Manakeesh to Paterson is a homecoming of another kind. He and his brothers were born and raised only a few blocks from the restaurant. Years later, they returned to the neighborhood of their childhood as the owners of New Jersey’s first Al Manakeesh location.
Abdul Hamdan already understood the language of dough. For 23 years, he has owned Wise Guys Pizza in New Jersey, alongside his work in real estate development. But after tasting Al Manakeesh in Chicago and Ohio, he recognized something different — a concept built not simply around bread, but around memory.
Al Manakeesh’s menu honors that memory. Traditional manakeesh arrives covered with za’atar, akkawi cheese, or both. Other versions are topped with eggs, tomatoes or labneh. Makdous — small, tangy eggplants filled with walnuts, peppers and garlic, then preserved in olive oil — brings another familiar Levantine flavor. Sfeha is topped with seasoned ground meat and tomato, while mozzarella, pesto and beef pepperoni show how an old bread continues to welcome new tastes.
Another bread carries the story even further into the past. Ka’ak al-Quds, Jerusalem’s sesame-covered bread, is recognized by its long oval ring, pale, airy center, and toasted crust. For generations, its aroma has drifted through the streets near Jerusalem’s Old City, where vendors traditionally sell the warm loaves with small packets of za’atar.
At Al Manakeesh, the Jerusalem bread may be opened and filled with za’atar and olive oil, cheese, eggs or other savory ingredients. Yet perhaps it is most evocative when enjoyed simply — warm from the oven, its sesame crust giving way to a soft interior and memories of Jerusalem’s winding streets.
The history of ka’ak reaches deep into Arab culinary tradition. As Palestinian food writer Reem Kassis notes, ka’ak appears in medieval Arabic cookbooks, including a 13th-century recipe for rings of dough that were boiled and then baked. Because this technique resembles the traditional method of making bagels, Kassis and other culinary historians suggest that ka’ak may be part of the bagel’s much older story.
Yet history does not survive only in cookbooks. It lives in familiar gestures: a baker pressing fingertips into dough, a spoon circling za’atar over bread, and a parent tearing off the first warm piece for a child.
Perhaps that is why manakeesh carries such feelings. It does not belong only to holidays or special occasions. It belongs to ordinary mornings — the kind we rarely know are precious until they have passed.
At Al Manakeesh, heritage is not displayed behind glass. It is baked throughout the day, folded into paper and handed across the counter.
And for a little while, at a table in Paterson, the road home begins with the fragrance of za’atar.
Visit Al Manakeesh
147 Crooks Ave, Paterson, NJ 07503
almanakeesh.com
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