For six of the vendors \u2014 serving cuisines that encompass regional Mexican, Thai and Cal-Med \u2014 the setup is casual. Settle at a tiled table, zap the QR code and scroll through menu pages. In minutes you can be twirling a fork around pad Thai from the team behind Holy Basil<\/a> and then reach with both hands for a giant, crackling wedge of L.A.\u2019s most celebrated tlayuda<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maydan L.A., on the other hand, is the market\u2019s sole full-service restaurant, located in the back of the space. It\u2019s partitioned by a long, tiled bar along the left wall, situated behind the hearth and its surrounding oval counter and framed, aesthetically, by double Moroccan doors painted in hypnotic geometries. A mural of a vineyard meanders over pale brick and around two picture windows.<\/p>\n These are visual clues to the cultures that Previte threads as a chef, seasoned traveler and restaurateur. Her talents at combining foods<\/a> from a broad swath of the map into a cohesive narrative is the restaurant\u2019s greatest strength, and also its guidepost for possibilities yet to be realized. More on that in a minute.<\/p>\n Rose Previte is the chef-owner of Maydan L.A. restaurant and Maydan Market in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cMaydan\u201d is Previte\u2019s shibboleth. It\u2019s the name of the career-defining restaurant she opened in Washington, D.C.,<\/a> in 2017, and of her cookbook published by Abrams<\/a> in 2023. The term also feels like her culinary GPS coordinates. \u201cPronounced \u2018MY-dahn,\u2019 \u2018MAY-dahn\u2019 or \u2018MI-dan,\u2019 the word is used throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, Central and South Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and North Africa,\u201d she writes in her book: \u201cIt means the same thing everywhere: a central public meeting place, often in the middle of a city. A space for people to come together as a community to celebrate, to mourn, to rebel.\u201d<\/p>\n Place a pin on Beirut<\/a> as a starting point. Previte\u2019s mother has Lebanese roots, and Maydan anchors us there while incorporating other foodways she\u2019s come to know through her roaming and research. Before the original D.C. location began serving customers, she and its founding co-chefs Chris Morgan and Gerald Addison toured Morocco, Tunisia, Georgia, Lebanon and Turkey, often learning from home cooks and recognizing live-fire cooking as a unifying factor. These influences, fueled by blazing hearths, continue to inform Maydan\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n 1 <\/p>\n 2 <\/p>\n 1. Josh Sta Ana, chef de cuisine at Maydan L.A. places flatbread in a Georgian-style tone wood-fired clay oven. 2. Flatbread coming out of the wood-fired clay oven. (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n My best advice? Come with a group.<\/p>\n Servers steer diners toward a $95-per-person family-style prix fixe labeled \u201ctawleh\u201d (\u201ctable\u201d in Arabic). The spread involves hummus and other dips; a round of mouneh (pickled or preserved vegetables) and leafy salads; a few small plates and, the one big decision, one platter to share, opting between meats or fish or a head of spiced, roasted cauliflower.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re the type who bristles at being sold a package deal \u2014 me too \u2014 most everything included with the tawleh, and more, is available a la carte. But over multiple meals I\u2019ve come to value the curation of this option. Previte understands how to package a selection of dishes to deliver the most consistent, nourishing experience, satisfying in both its unity and variety.<\/p>\n Plenty of plush flatbread baked in a clay oven will arrive to accompany the mezze. Swipe it through the hummus, balanced in tahini and lemon, and mulchy muhammara twanging with pomegranate molasses, and casik, the Turkish variation of the region\u2019s ubiquitous herbed yogurt and cucumber dip. Alternate bites of pickled turnips with sprigs of mint and lush honey-soaked dates.<\/p>\n Halloumi with Egyptian peanut dukkah and wildflower honey at Maydan L.A. restaurant.<\/p>\n (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The first of the small plates to always disappear: halloumi, burnished coppery in the fire and showered with peanut and sesame dukkah, which crunches audibly against the squeaky cheese.<\/p>\n Among centerpiece mains, I love the sayyadiah, a riff on a coastal Lebanese and Palestinian staple of spiced fish and rice. Branzino, grilled to crisp-edged precision, is slathered with shatta, a chunky hot sauce (this one is milder than most) and scented with orange, cumin and lemony sumac. Grab the side of tahina, a traditional pairing, for another layer of flavor and texture.<\/p>\n Sayyadiah, grilled butterflied branzino, with red shatta, oranges, sumac and cumin at Maydan L.A. at Maydan Market.<\/p>\n (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Or the mood might call for ripping into smoky lamb shoulder, rubbed with baharat (Lebanese seven spice) and rendered to a consistency somewhere wonderfully between melty and ropy. The meat plays well with all the condiments you can throw at it \u2014 harissa, chermoula with a fleeting whiff of saffron, tahina, even toum, the garlic emulsion classically meant for poultry \u2014 while you swipe through the last swirls of dip and pass the final shards of bread.<\/p>\n If you are inclined to order wine, the by-the-glass options make for easy drinking, but the thoughtfully annotated bottle list covers much more compelling territory. A wine import company is among Previte\u2019s endeavors, and she mirrors the food by bringing in lesser-seen varietals from Lebanon and Georgia.<\/p>\n Bruce Childress, Maydan Market\u2019s director of restaurants, will swoop in with gracious suggestions across price points and tastes preferences. Childress brings a consummate sense of hospitality to the restaurant, as does beverage director Danny Rubenstein, whose big-hearted presence plenty of us recall at Here\u2019s Looking at You<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bartender Zac Hills-Bonczyk pours a pair of za\u2019atar martinis at the Maydan L.A. restaurant bar inside Maydan Market.<\/p>\n (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Circling back to Maydan L.A.\u2019s a la carte menu, I could drill down on some quibbles: the Omani-style shrimp cooked to mealiness and with none of the promised zing of dried lime; an odd squash m\u00e9lange where any tang seems to have been bleached from its goat cheese sauce.<\/p>\n I feel a greater pull, though, to think through the restaurant\u2019s further potential. The menu, arriving at this moment in the city\u2019s food culture, lands as familiar. Likable. Safe.<\/p>\n When I reviewed Maydan in D.C. <\/a>during my years as Eater\u2019s national critic, I had a special called tehan: ground goat, channeled from street food Previte and her team shared in the Medina of Marrakech, which combined the heart, liver and other trimmed meats, simmered to harmony and brightened with harissa and preserved lemon. Intense, intricate and also simple, it was one of the most wondrous things I ate during that era. It was a bridge. It tasted of somewhere.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t about fetishizing offal. This is about the leap toward specificity, to diving below the surface of the most broadly appealing, easy-to-synthesize dishes \u2014 the ones, from any nation\u2019s cuisine, that rarely make their way into restaurant repertoires. <\/p>\n Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n Chef-founder Rose Previte details the bevy of vendors and dishes at West Adams\u2019 cross-cultural new food hall.<\/p>\n Los Angeles has the basics of Eastern Mediterranean covered (and for ultra-smooth hummus, no one has yet to beat Bavel<\/a> or Saffy\u2019s<\/a>) and far too few examples of excellent North African cooking. Maydan could be a place to fill the voids, to make cultures too often dehumanized in the U.S. more tangible, to yank us out of our digital fogs.<\/p>\n Given her background, and the recipes in her cookbook, and in Maydan D.C.\u2019s early direction, Previte understands this. Raised by a Lebanese cook, she knows the good jolt of hindbe, a winter dish of bitter greens puckery with lemon and tempered with caramelized onions. She knows loubieh bil zeit, a dish of flat Romano beans slow-cooked in olive oil, often with whole garlic cloves and sometimes with cinnamon. It makes you sigh with summery joy. Romano beans don\u2019t flourish everywhere. They do in Lebanon, and in California.<\/p>\n![\"Rose](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775821703_602_.jpeg\")
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