100 Favorite Dishes, No. 80: Any Sandwich on Iraqi Bread at Bilad Bakery and Restaurant

Brian Reinhart June 1, 2017 4:00AM

Shawarma ready to eat at Bilad Bakery. Kathy Tran

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Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

At Bilad Bakery and Restaurant, there’s regular pita bread, of course, and it's good. But the samoon, or “Iraqi bread,” is what we’re still dreaming about months later. It’s shaped like an oval, with little points of dough sticking out each end like rolling-pin handles. They come out hot, straight from the oven and achingly fresh, and when you bite into them, there’s a classic crisp-outside, soft-inside party of textures in your mouth.

It almost doesn’t matter what’s in the sandwich because with that bread – and with Bilad’s terrific pickles and veggies – lunch will be stellar. But this bakery-restaurant-market makes pretty good falafel and excellent shawarma from either chicken or beef. Try dipping a falafel sandwich in amba, a mango and vinegar variation on ketchup, and you can’t go wrong with some hummus on the side. In fact, at Bilad Bakery and Restaurant, you can’t go wrong at all.

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Brian Reinhart has been the Dallas Observer's food critic since spring 2016. In addition, he writes baseball analysis for the Hardball Times and covers classical music for the Observer and MusicWeb International.

Contact: Brian Reinhart

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100 Favorite Dishes, No. 80: Any Sandwich on Iraqi Bread at Bilad Bakery and Restaurant

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