The Z&Z Za’atar Company Is Converting a Rockville Pizza Shop Into Its First Restaurant | Eater DC

"Opening this summer at 1111 Nelson Street, I expect Z&Z Manoushe Bakery will showcase the manoushe the Palestinian‑American Dubbaneh family has sold at farmers’ markets since 2016 and supplied as Z&Z za’atar to trendy D.C. restaurants and boutique grocers. Led by brothers Danny and Johnny Dubbaneh, the restaurant will serve manoushe and lahm bi ajeen (a meat pie longtime customers request), with sides such as tabbouleh, hummus, labneh, and za’atar‑dusted french fries; for dessert they will offer knafeh, a crunchy, stretchy pastry of phyllo dough, cheese, and simple syrup often flavored with flowers. Drinks will include mint tea, cardamom coffee, and Bonjus, and on weekends they’ll feature an Arab breakfast platter with manoushe, labneh, and olives. The space will also house a market stocking Z&Z goods and more—pickles, tahini, coffee beans—and the owners are pursuing a license to sell retail bottles from Terra Sancta Trading. Seating is planned for about 25 indoors and 25 outside, with many customers expected to take orders to-go for picnics in nearby Woodley Gardens Park. The business began at D.C.-area farmers’ markets in 2016 before expanding to an online store, Whole Foods, and wholesale relationships with Call Your Mother, Timber Pizza Co., and Maydan; it remains a family operation involving parents Issa and Muna Dubbaneh (bringing Palestinian and Jordanian cooking traditions), siblings who work the Fairfax market, and help out of a Maryland warehouse. The bakery will occupy the space their maternal grandfather Fayez Khawaja—known as Fuzzy—ran from 1982 to 2006, and the Dubbanehs plan to renovate the retro orange and brown interior into white walls, green accents, and Arab pop art with a large window to reveal the kitchen, embracing “the theater of the kitchen,” as Danny says, while honoring their grandfather’s lasting presence in the neighborhood." - Charlotte Goddu