Savor Scout › Food guides › Iraqi food
How to find good Iraqi food
Iraqi food is generous, rice-heavy and slow-cooked, with flavours of dried lime, tomato and baharat. Iraqi restaurants in the US are most common around Detroit, San Diego, Nashville and Chicago, and they are worth seeking out.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Samoon baked in-house — Diamond-shaped Iraqi bread, crisp outside and soft inside, often from a stone oven on site.
- Quzi — Lamb slow-cooked on spiced rice with nuts and raisins. A centrepiece dish; a place that makes it is cooking for families.
- Iraqi dolma — Vegetables and vine leaves stuffed and cooked together in a sour, tomatoey sauce. Different from Greek or Lebanese dolma.
- Kubba — Rice or bulgur shells with spiced meat, fried or simmered in soup. Kubba hamuth, in a sour turnip broth, is a sign of a home-style kitchen.
- Dried lime — Black dried lime gives Iraqi stews their sour, earthy depth.
What to order
- Quzi — If on the menu.
- Dolma — The Iraqi mixed version.
- Tikka and kebab — From the grill, with samoon.
- Masgouf — Butterflied grilled carp, if you find it.
- Tepsi baytinjan — Baked aubergine and meatballs in tomato sauce.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for samoon, quzi, kubba, masgouf and Iraqi, which separates Iraqi kitchens from the Middle Eastern category they are usually filed in.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
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