In a space that feels like a stylish, homey living room, you’ll find the energetic chef expediting orders, sprinkling that last handful of nigella seeds, or greeting returning diners like family. Samir worked his way up through fine-dining ranks under chefs like Reem Assil, but always aspired to have a place to call his own. Beit Rima is indicative of how the next generation of chefs cooks unapologetically and authentically to their stories, and, in a city where the personal is political, Beit Rima deliciously weaves a multigenerational story with a captive, hungry audience.

It looks like Samir’s persistence has won his family over, as a second Beit Rima is in the works in Cole Valley, taking over—you guessed it—another now-retired Burgermeister. Like any local who loves to host, my favorites for a birthday or baby shower gathering include her fiery grilled jerk chicken thighs, and escovitch—pan-seared local trout topped with a confetti of hot and sweet peppers in a malt vinegar–based sauce. One last insider tip: Peaches Patties’ once-a-year jerk whole turkey is a welcome addition to any Friendsgiving table.

Where the neon lights dimmed on the Burgermeister on Church Street now shines Beit Rima. With his parents’ blessing, Chef Samir Mogannam reimagined this location of his family’s 20-year-old burger chain into a bustling spot—sweetly named after his mother, Rima—dishing up what he calls “Arab comfort food.” Eschewing the dilution inherent in the boundary-less umbrella term “Mediterranean,” Samir’s menu is a faithful homage to his Palestinian and Jordanian heritage.

My personal favorites include the meze sampler platter—the spicy-sweet muhammara, a red-pepper-and-walnut dip served with crunchy seasonal veggies and bright-pink pickles, is a standout—and the hummus ma’lehma (with spiced ground beef and pine nuts), which I usually pair with the creamy, tangy house-made labneh and a glass of minerally Palestinian white wine. Don’t miss the blistering-hot made-to-order pita with an ample dusting of za’atar, and hearty plates of perfectly charred yogurt-marinated chicken skewers atop Samir’s mother’s rice.

Grilled Whole Fish

Note: For best results, use as many different salted pork parts as available, though you can always make it with just a few. Straight up salt pork and slab bacon with some good sausage will be quite delicious. Farofa is fried manioc (yucca) flour. It can be found in Brazilian markets ready-to-eat, or make it yourself by toasted rough-ground yucca flour in a bit of oil in a skillet over medium heat until golden brown.

1 pound dried black beans, picked over
Kosher salt
1 pound salted pig parts – ears, trotters, salted pork fatback, slab bacon (see note), cut into 1/2 to 1-inch pieces, rinsed of excess salt
1 pound linguiça, longaniza, or South American chorizo (or a mix), cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
1/2 pound carne do sol or corned beef, cut into 1/2 to 1-inch chunks (optional)
1 large onion, diced fine
1 green bell pepper, core and seeds discarded, diced fine
6 scallions, white and light green parts only, sliced fine
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 large tomato, finely diced
3 bay leaves

To Serve:
Cooked rice
Orange wedges
Sauteed kale or shredded cabbage
Hot sauce
Farofa (see note)
Directions
Dissolve 1/4 cup kosher salt in a gallon of cold water. Add the beans and allow to soak overnight (at least 8 hours). Drain and rinse.

In a medium bowl, stir together tomatoes, red onion, green pepper, red pepper, cilantro, parsley, vinegar, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Let molho stand at least 30 minutes, or refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Return to room temperature before serving.

About 30 minutes before grilling, remove fish from refrigerator and let come to room temperature. Light one chimney full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and spread the coals evenly over half of coal grate. Alternatively, set half the burners of a gas grill to high heat. Set cooking grate in place, cover grill and allow to preheat for 5 minutes. Clean and oil the grilling grate. Combine soaked beans, pork parts, sausage, beef, onion, pepper, scallion, cilantro, tomato, and bay leaves in a large saucepot. Cover with water by 2 inches. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer and cook, topping up with water as necessary to keep beans completely submerged until beans are completely tender and liquid is a deep black, about 6 to 8 hours. Season to taste with salt (you probably won’t need any more, depending on how salty your pig parts were). Serve with rice, orange wedges, greens, hot sauce, and farofa. Feijoada is excellent reheated.

Salting the tomatoes in advance concentrates their flavor.
White wine vinegar acts as a quick-pickling brine, helping to preserve the vegetables’ texture and color longer than citrus juice does in pico de gallo.
1 large tomato, cored, seeded, and cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 3/4 cup)
Kosher salt
1/2 large red onion (4 1/2 ounces/130g), diced (about 1 cup)
1/2 green bell pepper (4 1/2 ounces/130g), stemmed, seeded, and diced (about 3/4 cup)
1/2 red bell pepper (4 1/2 ounces/130g), stemmed, seeded, and diced (about 3/4 cup)
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro leaves and tender stems
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves and tender stems
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (30ml)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (15ml), plus more for oiling fish
Freshly ground black pepper
2 (1- to 1 1/2-pound; 450 to 680g) whole fish, such as branzini, mackerel, or trout, scaled and gutted

Directions
Season tomatoes with 1 teaspoon salt and toss to combine. Transfer to a fine-mesh strainer or colander set in a bowl and allow to drain for 20 to 30 minutes. Discard liquid.

Thoroughly pat fish dry with paper towels. Season inside and out with salt and pepper. Rub fish all over with olive oil.

Set fish over hot side of grill and cook until bottom sides are browned, about 5 minutes. Using a carving fork (the tines of which can slide down between the grill grate) or a thin metal spatula, carefully attempt to lift fish from below; if it resists, allow to cook for 1 more minute and try again. When fish lifts easily from grill, turn onto other side and cook until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part registers 135°F (57°C), about 5 minutes longer; if skin begins to char before fish is cooked through, transfer fish to cooler side of grill to finish cooking. Let rest 5 minutes.

Serve fish, spooning molho on top. (If you want to serve the fish off the bone, follow our article and video on carving a whole cooked fish.)

Special equipment
Fine-mesh strainer, grill, thin metal spatula or carving fork

As any good social media editor would, I snapped a photo and posted it on Instagram. The response was resounding: I want to go to there. So I pinged Daniel and Sasha in hopes of developing a recipe so we can all go to there whenever we please. Daniel, a capoeira master and general Brazil fanatic, was more than happy to oblige.

The resulting recipe is more of a technique than a recipe. It starts (and practically ends) with a shrink-wrapped package of queijo coalho skewers—an easy find at one of the numerous Brazilian groceries in Queens. Those elsewhere in the country can order the cheese online, where you may find it either precut and pre-skewered or in solid-block form. Drying and oiling the fish before grilling reduces the chances that it will stick.
Molho à campanha is a lot like Mexican pico de gallo, except it uses vinegar instead of citrus juice and adds more peppers to the mix of tomato, onion, and cilantro. It’s most commonly served alongside charred steaks, but it’s just as good spooned over grilled whole fish as in this recipe.

After five minutes over the flame, the cheese my friend ordered had turned a perfect golden brown on both sides, its surface slightly blistered from the heat. As he offered us our skewers, the vendor produced a small bag of toppings to choose from. A thin, pungently tangy white garlic sauce (molho de alho), drizzled from a squeeze bottle across the surface? Yes, please. A sprinkling of dried oregano? With pleasure.

I savored the garlicky, piping-hot brick of just-soft cheese between sips of a caipirinha, the perfect citrusy contrast to the greasy, fatty skewer. I felt like my third eye had been opened to the possibilities of beach snacks. Forget Chex Mix and cheesy popcorn—I’d be thinking about these skewers every beach day for the rest of my life.

Halloumi will also work in a pinch; when grilled, it takes on nearly the same texture as coalho. Just add garlic sauce and oregano, and you’re all set for a backyard barbecue or a trip to the beach.

In Israel, bourekas are the quick breakfast or lunch of choice. These savory pastries made their way to the Middle East by way of the Balkans and can be filled with all sorts of cheeses and veggies. Janna Gur, author of The Book of New Israeli Food, includes several boureka recipes representing many of the filling combinations and doughs that make this pastry so popular.

These cheese bourekas are ideal for boureka novices who aren’t yet ready to start making their own puffy pastry dough. Using the store-bought stuff, these bourekas are stuffed with a wonderfully salty mix of Israeli cheese including gvina levana, kashkaval, and brinza. These exotic cheeses aren’t the easiest to find so ricotta, parmesan, and feta can also be subbed in. The cheese is bound with a couple of egg yolks and a bit of cornstarch, pinched into triangles of puff pastry and sprinkled with sesame seeds before being baked.

I’ve found that using 20% whole wheat flour strikes the perfect balance, making the dough much more flavorful and nutty than one made with just all-purpose flour, while also not compromising its structure.
How do you get that pocket? Here are my rules.

Rule 1: Knead the Dough Well
Pita is a yeasted bread, which means it has to go through several stages: mixing, proofing, shaping, final proofing, and baking. To make pitas, start by simply mixing all of the ingredients together.

As with all yeasted breads, make sure that your liquid (in this case, water) is at the right temperature for the yeast to wake up and start doing its job of fermenting the dough and producing carbon dioxide. Go with a temperature of around 105°F (41°C), and don’t let it get higher than 120°F (49°C), or the yeast will start to die, and that’s just cruel.

Mix until it forms what we bakers call a “shaggy mass.” At this point, almost all of the flour is incorporated, and the mixture has almost become a dough, but is still rather ragged.

Chewy, flavorful, steam-puffed homemade pita bread (with a real pocket!) can be yours in just two hours.
Staring through the oven door as pita bread bakes is the best part of making it at home. When I teach my baking class, the culinary students are always amazed as the pita breads blow up like balloons, seemingly about to pop. If they’re not made right, though, the pitas won’t puff and get that big pocket in the middle—a key element of a successful pita.

Baking pitas at home is absolutely worth the effort. Freshly made ones are in a completely different league from the ones bought at the store in plastic bags. They’re chewier and more delicate, and they have a delicious, yeasty aroma that wafts out when you open up the pocket. It’s also not a major time commitment: Pitas can be baked and sandwich-stuffed in less than two hours.

A perfectly puffed pita is a beautiful thing.
The Pocket
So why does pita bread have a pocket, anyway? It’s all about structure, moisture, and heat. When a thin disk of pita dough is placed on a hot surface in the oven, two things start to happen. First, the intense heat starts to dry and set the dough on the top and bottom. At the same time, it begins to turn moisture in the center of the pita to a blast of steam.

For the Cheese Filling:
1 pound, 2 ounces gvina levana (fresh white cheese) or ricotta (5% fat)
9 ounces kashkaval or Parmesan cheese, grated
9 ounces brinza or feta cheese, crumbled
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon corn starch
Freshly ground black pepper
For the Pastry:
3 pounds, 5 ounces puff pastry dough
1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for brushing
Sesame seeds for garnishing

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Beat all ingredients for filling until smooth.

Roll dough into a 1/4-inch-thick sheet. Cut into 5-inch squares. Put 1 tablespoon of filling in center of each square, fold diagonally to form a triangle and pinch edges together. Arrange bourekas with sufficient space between them on a tray lined with baking paper.

Brush triangles with beaten egg and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Bake for about 30 minutes until bourekas are golden and plump and smell delicious.

When enough steam is generated, it builds pressure, pushing the pita out from the center and inflating it. Because the exterior has already started to set, though, it’s strong enough to resist rupturing, keeping that steam bubble trapped within.

I also like to use some whole wheat flour in my dough for flavor. Whole wheat can be tricky, though, because it doesn’t generate gluten as well as all-purpose or bread flour—and we need that gluten to make the dough elastic enough to expand around that central air pocket.

Use some vegetable sticks or slices like cucumbers and carrots.
Garlic: Raw garlic slices for those garlic lovers out there – just pop a slice on top of the meat in your ssam
Rice or noodles: You’ll probably be full after all the meat, but most KBBQ places offer rice and noodles at the end, just as an ending to the meal. Mike actually loves putting rice into his ssam, so if you like, serve up some bowls of rice with your KBBQ. As for noodles, well, who doesn’t love noodles? Super popular is naengmyeon, or cold noodles, because after all the heat, you’ll want to cool down with a bowl of slippery, savory icy cold noodles.
How much food/meat should I prepare
Meat
Plan on 1/2 to 3/4 pound of meat per person. If you have big meat eaters, plan on 1 pound of meat per person. If you’re having bone-in short ribs, double the amount of short ribs, because of bones.
Vegetables
Get at least 1 head of lettuce and 1 pack/bunch of perilla leaves between two people.
Banchan
Plan on 1-2 ounces of each kind of banchan and aim for 4 (or many more) varieties.
Rice
Make 1/2 cup of uncooked rice per person, which will give you about 1.5 cups cooked.

This is one of my newest and most favorite things to eat.

It’s a block of tofu, nicely browned in teriyaki sauce, served on a bed of sticky rice with edamame, cucumber, avocado, jalapeño, a handful of crushed-up crunchy onions (seriously, trust me) and buried under a thick drizzle of extra teriyaki and spicy mayo.

And just like that you’ve been transported to your favorite strip-mall sushi joint, eating a crunchy roll in bowl form, without the nervousness that accompanies raw fish and / or the work involved in rolling.

Just everything good about a crunchy roll, plus veg-focused and easy to make.
As with any bowl, there are tons of opportunities for customization here: different protein, different sauces, different vegetables.

I used a store-bought teriyaki sauce because that’s where I’m at in my life right now. I used the Soy-Vay brand – it’s tasty, sweet and savory, and has a little bit of sesame going on with it. But if you have the time and energy to make your own sauce, please invite me to your house for lunch because that… sounds really yummy.

It’s more likely that you’ll need to tweak the recipe a bit.

If the rice is still crunchy and the skillet is dry at this point, add more broth by the half cup and continue to simmer on low, covered, in three-minute batches until the rice is tender.
If the rice is tender but there is still stock in the skillet that hasn’t been absorbed, then remove the lid and let the stock evaporate off for a few minutes.

INSTRUCTIONS
To toast the pepitas, pour them into a small skillet. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they are making little popping noises and starting to make little popping noises. Transfer to a bowl to cool.
To make the pesto, pit and halve the avocados and scoop the insides into the bowl of a food processor. Add the garlic, lemon juice, and salt.

Blend until smooth, pausing to scrape down the sides as necessary.
Add the toasted pepitas and basil leaves and pulse until the pepitas and basil are broken down into very small pieces and the mixture is well-blended. Taste, mix in more salt if the mixture doesn’t taste totally awesome yet.

This is one of my newest and most favorite things to eat.

It’s a block of tofu, nicely browned in teriyaki sauce, served on a bed of sticky rice with edamame, cucumber, avocado, jalapeño, a handful of crushed-up crunchy onions (seriously, trust me) and buried under a thick drizzle of extra teriyaki and spicy mayo.

And just like that you’ve been transported to your favorite strip-mall sushi joint, eating a crunchy roll in bowl form, without the nervousness that accompanies raw fish and / or the work involved in rolling.

Just everything good about a crunchy roll, plus veg-focused and easy to make.
As with any bowl, there are tons of opportunities for customization here: different protein, different sauces, different vegetables.

I used a store-bought teriyaki sauce because that’s where I’m at in my life right now. I used the Soy-Vay brand – it’s tasty, sweet and savory, and has a little bit of sesame going on with it. But if you have the time and energy to make your own sauce, please invite me to your house for lunch because that… sounds really yummy.

Use some vegetable sticks or slices like cucumbers and carrots.
Garlic: Raw garlic slices for those garlic lovers out there – just pop a slice on top of the meat in your ssam
Rice or noodles: You’ll probably be full after all the meat, but most KBBQ places offer rice and noodles at the end, just as an ending to the meal. Mike actually loves putting rice into his ssam, so if you like, serve up some bowls of rice with your KBBQ. As for noodles, well, who doesn’t love noodles? Super popular is naengmyeon, or cold noodles, because after all the heat, you’ll want to cool down with a bowl of slippery, savory icy cold noodles.
How much food/meat should I prepare
Meat
Plan on 1/2 to 3/4 pound of meat per person. If you have big meat eaters, plan on 1 pound of meat per person. If you’re having bone-in short ribs, double the amount of short ribs, because of bones.
Vegetables
Get at least 1 head of lettuce and 1 pack/bunch of perilla leaves between two people.
Banchan
Plan on 1-2 ounces of each kind of banchan and aim for 4 (or many more) varieties.
Rice
Make 1/2 cup of uncooked rice per person, which will give you about 1.5 cups cooked.