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Not quite, and the honest answer is more useful than a yes. Nabäti is a Jordanian kitchen on the Keizerstraat in Rotterdam Centrum. Jordanian and Lebanese cooking sit at the same Levantine table, so most of what people mean when they search for Lebanese food is on our menu, made the way our family makes it.
The Levant is Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, and its kitchens share far more than they differ on. Hummus, falafel, fattoush, baba ghanouj, muhammara, makdous, za’atar, halloumi, the whole mezze habit of putting many small dishes on a table at once: none of that belongs to one country. It belongs to the region.
So if you are looking for Lebanese food in Rotterdam, you will recognise almost everything here. What you will not find is a restaurant claiming to be something it is not.
Middle Eastern is the widest of those words and Levantine is the narrowest, and most people use them for exactly the same meal. If you searched for a Middle Eastern restaurant in Rotterdam, you almost certainly meant the food described above. A Levantine restaurant in Rotterdam is closer to what this actually is, and hardly anybody types it.
The practical difference is what arrives. Middle Eastern in this city usually turns out to mean grilled meat. Levantine means the mezze table, and that is what our menu is built around: seven plates that each come with warm pita, five bowls, and platters made for a table rather than for one person.
Hummus, spicy hummus, msabbaha, baba ghanouj, muhammara and foul mdammas, each with warm pita. This is the heart of the menu and the heart of the Levantine table.
Falafel fried to order with lemon tahini. The traditional falafel sandwich, the makali sandwich of fried aubergine, cauliflower and courgette, and the za’atar sandwich.
Fattoush with its crisp bread, small salads and pickles, and platters and boxes built for a table rather than a plate.
Less than you would expect, and enough to notice. Our fatteh bowls, layered with chickpeas, crisp bread and tahini, are cooked the way they are cooked at home in Jordan rather than the Lebanese way. What fatteh is, and what the Jordanian way actually changes about it, has a page of its own. Our spicing is a little quieter. The bread matters more.
Arabic food is not one cuisine, and the phrase covers more ground than any single restaurant can. The Arab world runs from Morocco to Oman. A Moroccan kitchen is built on couscous, preserved lemon and slow tagines. An Egyptian one on ful and koshari. The kitchens of the Gulf on spiced rice with meat over it. A Levantine one on olive oil, chickpeas, tahini, bread, and a table covered in small dishes. Those four have less in common with each other than most people expect.
When someone in the Netherlands searches for an Arabic restaurant, the Levantine end is usually what they are picturing. Hummus, falafel, baba ghanouj, fattoush, warm bread, a spread of small plates instead of one big one. That is the part of Arab cooking that travelled furthest, and it is the part we cook.
Jordan sits inside the Levant, in the region Arabic calls Bilad al-Sham, along with Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Those four kitchens share almost their entire vocabulary. What is specifically Jordanian rather than generally Levantine is smaller and more particular: fatteh layered and served the way it is served at home rather than the Lebanese way, stuffed falafel filled with onion and sumac, which our own menu calls a true Jordanian classic, spicing that is a little quieter, and bread doing more of the work.
So if you want an Arabic restaurant in Rotterdam and you mean the mezze table, this is that, cooked by a family from Amman. If you mean a tagine, a plate of kabsa, or shawarma off a spit, this is not that, and you would rather know before you walk up the Keizerstraat. There is no meat in our kitchen at all.
One difference worth knowing before you come: there is no meat in our kitchen. Nabäti is a vegetarian kitchen, and every dish on the menu can be made vegan. Levantine cooking is plant-based at its root, which is why so much of the menu is already vegan as served. If you came looking for shawarma, better that you know now.
Keizerstraat 168, 3011 GH Rotterdam. Rotterdam Centrum, five minutes on foot from Rotterdam Blaak.
