CW: Man, it is HOT here in “Oy Vegas”.
CW: Man, Vegas! I don’t know if you know but there are a ton of kosher joints in Vegas. We’re super excited. We’re here. It’s late night. It’s trippy as all hell going on right now. Tripping Kosher, Vegas Style!
Judd: Yeah, what what what.
CW: In the past hundred years this has become a huge major metropolis. And do you know what other city is like that? Tel Aviv. In fact I dub thee Las Vegas, Tel Aviv of the West.
CW: Because everywhere you go, who do you see?
Judd: Israelis?
CW: ISRAELIS!
CW: We are at the, probably one of the best dairy eatieres in Las Vegas. Panini Cafe. It’s a classic Israeli breakfast joint.
CW: We have a sambousak. I’m going to break it in half. I’m going to use the fork and the knife.
Judd: You have to pop the sack on the sambousak.
CW: No that’s… Ha, pop the sambusak! Alright… so what’s special about the sambousak… So it’s mushrooms, alright, and cheese. It’s got that beautiful flaky crust. It’s a Middle Eastern calzone, so it’s more of a filo, crispy, delicious. I know right, feel that? It’s got a good cheesy heft – you’ve got some mushrooms! But, what I really love – you’re going get this – this is just a fresh pureed tomato. And it’s just… it’s always refreshing with that salty, cheesy, crispy. But it’s really, it’s such an understated, like you don’t realize what kind of impact the sesame seeds have until we… This is a flaky, flaky… You get the little bite, that little nutty crunch of sesame. That fresh tomato. This is… It is out of this world, man.
CW: And what I really love about malawah is there’s so many different layers of textures right here. It’s all the same kind of dough. Some get crispy, some doesn’t. Crunch test, right?
CW: But to really do it right, take a little Malawah here, right… alright we’re going to put a little bit of the hard boailed egg. Classic Israeli salt brine pickle, right? On top, a little bit of kalamanta in there, right? And then we’re going with tomato – the freshly pureed tomato. This is CLASSIC.
CW: You do you!
CW: You do me.
What we have here is something called a Ziva, ok, and this really became famous, I think, about the 90s. It was really, it was a street food, kinda, gas station kinda joint. They did their old Yemenite traditions and they took them the malawah and they put cheese and musrooms and everything. And of course the classic Sesame.
CW: This is a temani (yemenite) zehug. This is delicious. It’s got cilantro. It’s got a little bit of spicey jalepeno. It’s so good. We’re going to crack it open, I’m going to get a little bit tomato in there.
CW: You know who would have thought that we’re going in Vegas, to some, like, you know, little Israeli hole in the wall. Breakfast, panini…
Judd: We thought there would just be turnkey.
CW: We thought it was going to be, just, you know “Israeli whatever but we’re in Vegas”. No. This is outstanding and incredible. This place is so authentic that the soccer in the background is in Hebrew. And so are the people screaming at the screen!
CW: This is really a fantastic way to start a day in Vegas. You wait all night. You learn that roulette is your new favorite game. Thank you. You want some flakey, crispy, cruncy sesame seed-y, fresh tomatoey.
Judd: This is where you gonna go.
They’re killing it here, man.
Panini!
Yeah.