NYCReview
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Zooba
Included In
You can’t walk down three streets in Manhattan without being confronted by fluorescent storefronts serving tzatziki bowls, soggy burritos, and sandwiches somehow filled with tonkotsu ramen. In most cases, these fast-casual places are both convenient during your lunch break and soul-sucking. If we’re lucky, twenty years from now, they will have gone extinct— like pagers, tall UGG boots, and printed MapQuest directions. Zooba will be the sole survivor of the great fast-casual extinction. It’s one of the few fast-casual restaurants in New York you should give a sh*t about.
This Egyptian spot in Nolita has several other locations in Cairo. It is, by definition, a fast-casual chain. Unlike the other members of its species, Zooba serves sandwiches, salads, and dips that are so balanced you won’t be able to stop saying the restaurant’s name out loud, like a percussive a cappella warm-up.
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Zooba’s Egyptian street food will be the first thing you think about at the end of your workout, before your lunch break, and at midnight when you’re drunk and want to confess your love to a sandwich that doesn’t know you exist. The specialty here is taameya, fried balls made from fava beans. They’re crunchy and excellent, and they come by themselves with sauce, on a salad, or in a pocket of soft baladi bread. Our favorite thing, though, is the cheese hawawshi. Its spiced beef patty, onions, tomatoes, and roumy cheese melt together into the hot baladi bread like they all have dependency issues. This is a stoner’s dream, a cow’s nightmare, and the most delicious thing here.
Even rarer for a fast-casual spot, you’ll want to have a sit-down meal at Zooba. There’s a ton to look at while you’re here, from the canopy of LED lights that covers the open kitchen to a bunch of colorful posters that look like the marketing campaign for a VR music festival. Even the required CPR instructions are bright green and depict an alligator in place of a choking person.
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Zooba checks all the boxes for a typical fast-casual restaurant. It’s quick, it’s open during your lunch break and whenever you get out of work, you can order things in bowl or wrap-form, and nothing on the menu costs more than $13. But unlike every other restaurant in the category, you’ll give a sh*t about Zooba. So the next time someone suggests another overdressed kale caesar, just start saying Zooba repeatedly. They’ll join in sooner or later.
Food Rundown
Classic Taameya
Spicy Taameya
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Cheese Hawawshi
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Spicy Hawawshi
photo credit: Teddy Wolff
Olive Labna Dip
Ful Medames
Taameya Salad
photo credit: Teddy Wolff