opened in 2023 at the site of the former Bellissimo Restaurant<\/a>, was Ayat\u2019s first Pennsylvania location.<\/p>\nAnother Pennsylvania location of Ayat is coming soon to Sansom Street in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear what led to the Allentown restaurant\u2019s closure and if any other Ayat locations are planned for the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
Co-owner Abdul Elenani did not immediately return a message seeking more information, and a hand-written note posted on the Tilghman Street restaurant\u2019s entrance door simply reads, \u201cSorry we are permanently closed.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Allentown location of Ayat is pictured shortly before its opening in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ryan Kneller<\/p>\n
The full-service Ayat, which debuted in Brooklyn in 2020, is a \u201ccasual bistro where you’ll find honest, authentic Palestinian food made with love,\u201d according to a description on the business\u2019 website.<\/p>\n
Over the past several years, Elenani and his wife, Ayat Masoud, have grown the business to include other locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Additional locations are coming soon to Texas and Washington, D.C., according to the business\u2019 website.<\/p>\n
Elenani created Ayat in honor of Masoud, a Palestinian lawyer with a passion for food.<\/p>\n
The restaurants\u2019 kitchens are \u201cfueled by olive oil, bold spices, fresh ingredients and a whole lot of love,\u201d Elenani wrote on the business\u2019 website.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAyat is honest, hardworking, and loves her career; but there is a different kind of love that radiates through her when she is cooking,\u201d Elenani\u2019s message continues. \u201cSeeing this passion in her and experiencing her delicious food, it was clear to me that the community needed to experience this too. So I created a bistro named after her where she can come to cook with local ingredients sourced from our FalahiFarms. A space where she can share her passion for food with the community she loves and works hard for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayat offers dozens of salads and hot and cold appetizers, including hummus, labneh, baba ghanoush, falafel, kibbeh, tabbouleh, fattoush, grilled halloumi and watermelon salad, muhammarah (roasted sweet red peppers blended with walnuts and pomegranate molasses) and beitenjan (fried eggplant drizzled with tahini and pomegranate molasses).<\/p>\n
Customers also can enjoy traditional laffa and platters (served with rice, pickles, green salad and wood-fired pita) such as falafel, shawarma (beef, chicken or mixed) and zahir with beitenjan laffa (cauliflower, eggplant, fries, hummus, tahini, tomato and pickles).<\/p>\n
Other menu highlights include mashawy dishes (served with rice, pickles, green salad and wood-fired pita) such as BBQ chicken, lamb chops and beef or chicken kebabs; and items from the wood-fired oven such as wings, zaatar manaqish and lahma bi ajeen (blend of ground beef, tomatoes and onions on a classic crust).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A full-service restaurant offering freshly prepared kebabs, falafel and other tasty dishes has ended operations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,11731,18933,153,155,154,977,18937,18936,18938,433,157,18934,18935,7799],"class_list":["post-29567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-restaurant","tag-ayat","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-food-and-dining","tag-hummus","tag-kebabs","tag-kefta","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-palestinian-cuisine","tag-palestinian-restaurant","tag-tilghman-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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