There are dozens of Middle Eastern restaurants in the Chicago area, but few focusing on the cuisine of Iraq.
There’s a lot of overlap with the more popular Lebanese and Jordanian menus in town, but there are a few dishes unique in the Iraqi kitchen.
The vertical spits of beef and chicken shawarma are hand-stacked and sliced throughout the day, just as the juicy kebabs are, always served with one of three different rices, at Spice and Fire Grill, in a Morton Grove strip mall on Golf Road. The family cooking everything is from Iraq.
“We have a traditional way of cooking the food, so when you come here, you expect the best,” said Aws Bahjat, whose family owns the restaurant. “For example, with the falafel, we use amba sauce, we don’t use the tahini sauce which is the white sauce.”
That’s not the only difference.
Consider the half dozen or so salads – some of which are familiar, like parsley-jammed tabbouli or creamy baba ganouj – others, such as a pasta salad with vegetables or an eggplant salad, are rarely seen in Lebanese kitchens in town. Also, the addition of pomegranate sauce is unique.
“The pomegranate sauce, it gives it that sourness, also a bit of sweet flavor,” he said.
The Food Guy
And like neighboring Iran, rice is paramount. Here, they make three kinds.
“Iraq is known for the rice; we have a lot of different rices. We did the yellow rice, the tomato rice and the biryani rice,” said Bahjat.
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All of which will be found beneath the lamb quzi.
“The quzi is our best dish because we cook it for five hours; it’s very tender. You pull the bone away, and the meat falls off,” he said.
They also prepare massive chicken platters, featuring slow-cooked, whole or half chickens, cooked down with some of their braising liquid and a bit of food coloring, turning them fire engine red.
“When we put it in the pan, we put the broth with it and then we put our secret sauce with it, and pomegranate of course,” said Bahjat.
Bahjat says many dishes may look familiar if you’ve had Lebanese, Jordanian or Palestinian, but the Iraqi difference comes just before serving.
“We put our sauces on it to make it more flavorful,” he said.
Here's where you can go:
Spice and Fire Grill
7925 Golf Rd. Morton Grove, IL 60053
