Three Palestinian restaurants landed on major Toronto best-of lists in the same year. That doesn’t just happen.
Arbequina on Roncesvalles made Foodism’s 23 Best Restaurants in Toronto for 2026. So did Louf on Davenport. And over in the Annex, a tiny flatbread counter called Makann had lineups within weeks of opening. These places are packed, and they’re all cooking Palestinian food on its own terms. Not lumped under “Middle Eastern.” Not toned down.
Toronto has roughly 15,000 Palestinian residents. The restaurants are catching up.
A refugee camp kid who cooked at WD-50
Arbequina is the one people notice first. Chef Moeen Abuzaid and his wife Asma Syed-Abuzaid opened it at 325 Roncesvalles Ave. The name comes from an olive variety native to Palestine.
Abuzaid grew up in an UNRWA refugee camp in Jordan. He was selling fresh herbs at age 4. He spent a decade cooking in New York after that, including time at Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50. Now he’s plating mutabbaq with truffled mushrooms and smoked kashkaval cheese in a quiet, olive-toned room on Roncesvalles.
Their menu is halal and alcohol-free. It’s fine dining (perfect date-night material), but the prices don’t require a special occasion. Abuzaid uses family spice blends from Jordan, and the kitchen runs on a close-to-zero-waste basis. Arbequina is on the Michelin Guide and ranked ninth on Foodism’s 23 Best list for 2026.
Palestinian fine dining at the foot of Casa Loma
Louf is at 501 Davenport Rd., a converted two-level house right below Casa Loma. Chef Fadi Kattan is Franco-Palestinian. Co-owner Nicole Mankinen connected with him in 2022 over a hilbeh recipe (a fenugreek semolina cake), and months of exchanging recipes turned into a restaurant.
The ingredients are specific: freekeh and Dead Sea salt from Palestine, laban jameed and sumac from GTA producers. The braised lamb shank with jameed is the dish to order. The lentil soup and shishbarak are both worth the trip on their own. Louf takes reservations through OpenTable, and if you use a wheelchair, there’s a barrier-free entrance from the patio and an elevator inside.
Louf hit number seven on Toronto Life’s Best New Restaurants list in 2025 and number fifteen on Foodism’s 23 Best for 2026. Two major lists, back-to-back years.
The $7.50 flatbread with the lineup around the block
Then there’s recently opened, Makann, which is the opposite of fine dining and still draws crowds. Mohammed Alkurd, who goes by Mo, opened a Palestinian flatbread counter at 866 Bathurst St. in the Annex in February 2026. Freshly baked flatbreads made to order. Za’atar, cucumber, tomato, olives. That’s basically the menu.
The za’atar sandwich is $7.50. The lineup started almost right away.
Makann means “a place” in Arabic, which is about right. It’s a small takeout spot near Bathurst station, open 9AM to 3PM, short menu, line out the door. You don’t need a tasting menu to get Toronto’s attention. You just need to be good at something specific.
The restaurants behind the restaurants
These aren’t spots borrowing Palestinian flavours for a fusion menu. Foodism ran a detailed feature on Toronto’s Palestinian restaurant scene, profiling spots beyond the big three. Darna in Leaside does home-style cooking, with owner Marwan Carmi’s father-in-law running a location in Ramallah. Their sayadieh, a Gazan fish and rice dish made with sea bass, is the thing to try. Levant Pizza in Dovercourt Village puts slow-cooked beef shawarma and tahini on pizza, run by Nader Qawasmi, whose family came from Palestine in the early 1970s and ran a diner in Keswick, Ontario for 30 years before this.
The piece treated all of these restaurants as spaces of cultural identity, not just places to eat.
If you haven’t tried any of these yet, go soon. As we have said before in other features, like most of Toronto’s foodie hotspots, the wait times won’t be getting shorter.
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