Egyptian – The Saboscrivner

The Dough Show

A month or so back, I made the trek out to East Orlando, near the University of Central Florida, to try a new restaurant everyone is talking about: The Dough Show (https://thedoughshowfl.com/). Despite the name making you think it might be a bakery or a pizzeria, it’s actually an Egyptian restaurant that specializes in savory and sweet baked pies made with flaky pastry dough called feteer meshaltet, or just feteer. A savory, flaky pie sounded pretty awesome, but when I entered the small space, I immediately got distracted by seeing marinated beef and chicken shawarma rotating on vertical spits:

And when I saw all the various fresh vegetables, condiments, and sauces, I was thrown even more:

So I had to start out by ordering a beef shawarma ($11.99), figuring it would be ready quickly, before my feteer pie. It came out of that open kitchen a matter of minutes, wrapped in soft saj bread — almost more like a thin flour tortilla than familiar, fluffy pita bread — that had been crisped up on the flattop grill like the best Mexican restaurants do to their burritos.

It was delicious. I didn’t think to ask for any specific vegetables or sauces in my shawarma, but I probably should have, since it was a bit plain. But the beef was marinated and seasoned really well, so at least it wasn’t dry (although the photo may not be the most appetizing).

At this point, I should point out the absolutely gorgeous custom-made oven The Dough Show uses to bake its feteer pies. It is HUGE, and the iridescent, multicolored metallic tiles glisten, glimmer, and shine in all the natural light that streams in.
Please don’t make my mistake — I was so distracted by my shawarma (and also my phone) that I completely missed the actual “show” from the gentleman rolling and flipping the dough and assembling my pie, but I’ve heard from other, more observant people that it is quite the spectacle.

There are many pies to choose from on the menu, and since this was my first time trying an Egyptian feteer pie, I decided to go for the “Dough Show” — the namesake pie ($19.99). It seemed to include a lot of stuff: “mixed meat, mixed cheese,” tomatoes, peppers, and olives. I’m really not a big fan of olives, but I figured if they were part of the namesake pie, I should give them a chance. Looking over the menu, the meats include sausage, salami, and pastrami, which I assume are all halal versions made from beef (as opposed to pork sausage or salami), and the cheeses were mozzarella, “Roman” cheese (Romano?), and Kiri, a creamy, mild, soft, processed cheese enriched with cream, which is apparently very popular in the Middle East. Hey, that sounded like an interesting combination, and it was!

I can’t prepare you for how big these feteer dough pies are, especially for one person, especially for one person who just inhaled a shawarma wrap. Each little piece is very filling, especially compared to a slice of pizza, due to all the included ingredients. Needless to say, I took the vast majority of this feteer pie home and ate it over the next few days, warming up pieces in the toaster oven so it stayed crisp.

By now, it sounds like the legend of The Dough Show has spread, and long lines have been forming, which is great. I’ve still only been once, but when I return, I would probably try the pastrami or salami in separate pies, since my only complaint was there was so much going on, it was hard to differentiate all the separate ingredients in the “Dough Show” pie I ordered. I might even ask them to hold the olives, even though I ate them, and they were okay. Hey, don’t judge — that just leaves more olives in the world for YOU to enjoy, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

Next time, I would also skip the shawarma, but I’d consider going with a friend to share a couple of different selections, and maybe even try something sweet. So have any of my readers been to The Dough Show yet? If so, what did you order, and would you recommend it?

Makani

Almost a year and a half after starting The Saboscrivner, I can’t say this blog has become a big breakthrough success. I choose to not use Instagram, always preferring a thousand words to a single picture. I don’t use that website that rhymes with “help,” and I’ll never become “help” elite. I’m the furthest thing from an influencer, since nobody wants to look at photos of me posing, trying to look cute while holding up the delicious foods I eat, trust me. I have literally DOZENS of followers, but at least I’ve made a mint off my food writing — one night, I got a single peppermint after paying my bill.

But my life is still better for it, because now when old friends pass through Orlando, they are much more likely to send me a Facebook message, inviting me to catch up over dinner, figuring I’ll pick a good restaurant. At least my reputation has grown that way, and I’ve been able to see and reconnect with good people I miss, who I haven’t seen in far too many years. Best of all, we can go to nicer places than I could afford back in the day.

This past week, I heard from an old friend from my college days in Gainesville. We hadn’t seen each other in over 15 years, and probably closer to 20. Back then he was one of the coolest people I had ever met, and he helped change my life for the better when I played in a band with him (and another friend I caught up with over a similar dinner at Chuan Lu Garden early this year). I always looked up to this guy as a fascinating punk rock poet and general badass, and now he’s even cooler as a tireless advocate and activist for the homeless in Gainesville. He was in town for a conference and staying down near International Drive, so I made a list of restaurants near there that I thought he might like, that I’ve also been wanting to try. That’s all the way across town from me, and I don’t make it down there very often.

So we decided on Makani (https://www.facebook.com/makaniorlando/), an Egyptian restaurant on International Drive, tucked into a truly international shopping plaza with an upscale steakhouse, a Chinese buffet, a traditional Japanese restaurant, a 24-hour Turkish restaurant/lounge, and a dinner theater that performs an interactive murder mystery every night. With no shortage of choices, I think we made the best possible one. I always love any Middle Eastern food, but had never tried Egyptian before. Needless to say, we feasted like the pharoahs of old, both of us having come a long way from feeling uncomfortable ordering anything at Taco Bell that wasn’t on the extra value menu. It’s nice to go out to eat with people who are up for trying and sharing almost anything.

This was the hawawshi ($17.99), sort of a meat pie with seasoned ground beef, onions, and parsley in a crispy pastry crust, almost like a lightly fried stuffed pita (although it was possibly just baked). I loved it. It came with a metal pitcher of a very hot hot sauce that we learned to treat with caution and apply sparingly. I would happily order this dish every time I return, I liked it that much.

I’ve written before about how I can take or leave fries, but these fries are among the best I’ve ever had. Crispy, crunchy, firm, flavorful, just salty enough — not limp or starchy. Top-notch fries!

I was intrigued by photos I had seen of this dish online, so I had to try it. This was mombar ($12.99), chewy, savory sausages of seasoned rice, vegetables, and herbs, stuffed into cow intestines, fried in oil, and festooned with chewy, sweet sultanas. I loved these, too! They reminded me of dolmas (or dolmades), grape leaves stuffed with tangy seasoned rice, one of my favorite side dishes in Middle Eastern and Greek cuisine, only these were much richer and meatier-tasting. They might sound weird, but I think most people would like them, if you get past the “cow intestine” dread. They were an unlikely favorite of mine, in fact.

This mixed grill ($29.99) arrived at our table on a fancy golden platform billowing hot smoke. It looked a little bit like the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of my Top Five favorite movies of all time, but you don’t want to shield your eyes from this smoke show. It came with a beef and lamb kofta skewer, a beef kabob skewer, a chicken kabob skewer, and a lamb chop, all char-grilled and expertly seasoned. I don’t know which one I preferred more, the kofta or the beef kabob. I like my lamb chops a little more on the rare side, but it still had so much flavor from the char-grilling process, something I just can’t do with meat at home, without a grill. There was plenty for two of us to share everything, especially since we had ordered so many other dishes.

The mixed grill came with a side order of rice that turned out to be a heaping mound of buttery rice pilaf, with vermicelli mixed in.

This intriguing mountain of deliciousness is the koshari ($14.99), a combination of rice pilaf (maybe fried?), lentils, spaghetti and elbow macaroni, topped with tomato sauce and crispy, fresh-fried onions (you could tell they were fresh and not just shaken out of the French’s canister). It would be a dream dish for vegetarians or anyone trying to carb-load, and it worked much better than you might be thinking. It was a wonderful blend of textures, as well as flavors. It also reminded me how much I love lentils, and how I should cook them at home far more often.
The menu said it also included chickpeas, but ours didn’t have any, and I was perfectly fine with that. I love falafel and usually like hummus, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of plain ol’ chickpeas. It also came with a side of garlic vinegar in a small metal pitcher, but we didn’t figure that out until we had already eaten most of it without it.

We were there a while and ordered a lot of stuff, so the friendly General Manager came by to check on us and very generously provided us with this dessert sampler (normally $13.99), completely free! It was an unnecessary gesture, but certainly a welcome and appreciated one.
Most of these desserts were reminiscent of baklava, but the top right and bottom left are kunefe (here called konafa), a Middle Eastern pastry made of finely-shredded dough (almost like more vermicelli) soaked in a sugar syrup over sweet cheese, then baked. It is buttery, crispy, rich, and very, very sweet. The ones in the middle may have been basbousa, which my research tells me is a semolina cake sweetened with simple syrup made with rosewater. And the rolls had the thin, crispy dough I associate with baklava, although I don’t know what this particular dessert is called. We devoured all of it with gusto, though.

This was a great night out, let me tell you. Not only did I get to try an amazing new restaurant (new to me and relatively new to Orlando), but I got to do it with an old friend who I had some real adventures with back in the day. Back then, being in a band with him and four other guys, I went from being a shy and sheltered introvert to a more confident performer. We played gigs all over Florida and as far out as New Orleans, and even recorded in multiple music studios. That was more than half my life ago, but I’ll never forget the excitement of being in a band with my friends, pretty much living my dream. I haven’t played music in far too many years and I miss it terribly, but I owe those five guys a debt I can never repay. I draw on those skills I learned every day, since teaching is just another kind of performing. I looked up to this guy, and I’m glad to say I still do now, just for different reasons. I was so glad to catch up and hear all about his wife, his kids, his continued education, and his heroic work on behalf of the homeless, as the founder and Executive Director of GRACE Marketplace in Gainesville. It’s an organization that could use your support, for anyone interested in donating to a truly worthy cause.

And in the meantime, whether you’re a local or a tourist, visiting our City Beautiful for a conference, convention, or vacation, Makani is one of your best bets along busy International Drive. Why not eschew the usual chains and try delicious Egyptian food, prepared with care and love? One of their signs calls it “Good Mood Food,” and I don’t see how you could eat at Makani and not be in a better mood.