Try Jordan’s National Dish and More at Dahab Restaurant & Cafe
Plus, three Columbus businesses were named semifinalists for the James Beard Foundation's 2025 Restaurant and Chef Awards.
First Impressions at Hilliard’s Dahab Restaurant & Cafe
By Bethia Woolf
Occupying a large space next to the Get Air trampoline park, Dahab Restaurant & Cafe is a new Mediterranean restaurant that opened in late 2024 in Mill Run. It’s uncommon to find a two-story restaurant in a strip mall, but Dahab boasts a spacious upstairs area that alone seats over 100. The food is certainly better than what you’d typically find at any trampoline park, so this could be a win-win destination if you have young children who need to burn off some energy during the winter!
The chef and owner, Mohammad Alturk, is Palestinian, but Dahab is one of the few places in Columbus where we’ve found Jordan’s national dish, mansaf—and it’s the best rendition we’ve tried.
Mansaf is a special-occasion dish traditionally served at weddings and funerals. Chunks of lamb are cooked in jameed, a dried, fermented yogurt that is rehydrated before use. Once tender, the lamb is served on a platter lined with wafer-thin flatbread called shrak, topped with buttery rice and toasted almonds, and accompanied by more yogurt broth on the side. While it might sound unusual, it’s absolutely delicious. The lamb is incredibly tender. Traditionally, mansaf is eaten by hand and rolled into balls, but this requires some skill and practice. Feel free to use silverware.
The mansaf was our favorite entrée, but we also really enjoyed the freekeh, which was a special served with grilled chicken. Dahab offers different daily specials, so it’s worth asking about the day’s options. Freekeh is a green grain made from young durum wheat that is roasted or smoked, polished to remove the shells and then cracked. It comes in various levels of coarseness.
Your meal at Dahab begins with a complimentary bowl of hearty lentil soup, which is very flavorful. They recommend adding a squeeze of lemon which brightens the earthy lentils.
We also ordered the vegetarian appetizer sampler, which included hummus, baba ganoush, falafel and grape leaves (unusually served warm). The hummus and baba ganoush were topped with tatbeeleh (Middle Eastern spicy salsa) and olive oil. The baba ganoush was wonderfully smoky, the hummus was silky smooth, and the falafel were freshly made and perfectly crunchy. Overall, it was an excellent selection. We also enjoyed the fried cauliflower appetizer, which came with our entrée platter.
Our entrée platter included a salad with a fun twist—it was topped with spiral croutons that resembled tiny cinnamon rolls and were drizzled with pomegranate molasses. These croutons are made in-house by the chef and are delightfully crunchy.
My only disappointment with Dahab was that the grilled meats were slightly overcooked for my preference. While the kebabs had great flavor, I found them texturally tough. The meat is sourced from Happy Farm Fresh Meat in London, Ohio, which specializes in halal meat. The Dahab chef takes pride in the freshness they offer.
Dahab does not serve alcoholic beverages, but I recommend trying Laziza, a refreshing malt beverage that’s a cross between soda and non-alcoholic beer.
The restaurant also offers desserts, including pastries and ice creams, but we were far too full to try them on this visit. If you visit Dahab, let us know if you try the desserts!
Find It:
3708 Fishinger Blvd., Hilliard, OH
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
Three Columbus businesses were recognized Wednesday as 2025 Restaurant and Chef Award semifinalists by the James Beard Foundation. Established in 1990, the James Beard Awards are among the most prestigious honors in the American food and beverage industry. For the second year in a row, chef Avishar Barua was named a semifinalist in the Best Chefs: Great Lakes category—this year for his work at Agni. Two local businesses are making their James Beard debuts. Dan Riesenberger’s bakery Dan the Baker, which has treated Columbus to artisan breads since 2008, is up for an award in the Outstanding Bakery category. (Maybe it was Riesenberger’s panettone that finally caught the committee’s attention.) Finally, Luke Pierce and Annie Williams Pierce’s five-year-old cocktail bar, Law Bird, is contending in the Outstanding Bar category. Finalists will be announced April 2, and the winners will be unveiled during a ceremony on June 16. See the full list of 2025 James Beard Awards semifinalists here.
On the heels of its third anniversary, Rose Dough Donuts announced a forthcoming brick-and-mortar doughnut shop in Clintonville (the location has yet to be announced). Owner Katie Passo, a Columbus native who founded the business in January 2022, has been running the bakery out of the commissary kitchen at 1400 Food Lab. The shop is currently closed until mid-February while Passo recovers from surgery.
The Clintonville pizzeria Wizard of Za, housed inside the Fusian location at 4214 N. High St., shut down for good on Monday. Wizard of Za was a COVID-era phenomenon that started as a bootstrap operation out of founder Spencer Saylor’s house, becoming well-known for its Sicilian-style pizzas and long waitlist. In December 2020, Saylor announced a partnership with Fusian and its first brick-and-mortar location. Saylor sold the company to Paceline Restaurant Partners, which owns Fusian, in January 2022.
It was really papery thin! Good luck
And so is my next pursuit, shrak. Sounds like a roomali roti, but I haven't yet read enough. I have my inverted carbon steel walk on standby.