Israeli restaurant Paprika opens in Great Neck

To best enjoy Paprika, sit with your back to the door, all eyes on the beautiful oven pumping out a stunning array of Levantine flatbreads and rustic tagines. Glance at the menu, but don't sweat it too much, as co-owner David Zaken is there to help navigate the  shawarmas and the schnitzels of Israeli cuisine.

Start with a glass of arak — that's what many in the packed restaurant seem to be drinking as they sing and dance and clap to the music. The milky beverage has a strong aniseed taste, which is lightened with a little ice on Zaken's recommendation. It still delivers a kick. The tables are packed with colorful sauces, golden platters of salads and grilled meats on wooden boards.

After years cooking in Manhattan, Zaken and his wife, Roni, relocated their catering operation to Great Neck, where they live. They originally intended to keep the menu casual with the same Israeli sandwiches and lunch items they served students at Yeshiva University. But they soon realized the neighborhood could use a gathering place for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and other special occasions. So they developed an upscale menu drawing from Roni's Moroccan Jewish heritage and the recipes from their hometown of Jerusalem. 

Paprika's open kitchen centers around the sizable brick oven inherited from the previous tenant, the Italian restaurant La Rotonda Ristorante.

Now they use the oven to bake the flatbreads that get wrapped around meats in iterations like the arays ($26), soft patties of ground meat kebabs stuffed inside little triangle pita pockets. The edges are blistered from the grill, giving the popular Arab street food a rustic taste of char that gets depth when dipped into silky tahini. Sometimes the meat is slow-cooked and pulled more like brisket, stuffed inside a thin flatbread crepe mufleta, which North African Jews eat to celebrate the end of Passover. This majnuna ($26) from the appetizer menu is crisped on the grill, making it a delicate little wrap with slivered red onions.

While you're eating these meaty bites and their many dips, you'll probably catch a server shuttling an earthenware pot from the oven. Sometimes the pot is topped with a conical lid of the tagine, a North African cooking method that Paprika uses for lamb medallions with soft apricots and onions served over couscous. You'll also notice the shimdura ($38), another tagine that's topped with a dome of charred flatbread.

Spinning the plate in a circular motion, the server rips open the bread with a knife at the table, revealing a steamy center of ground meat kebabs in a creamy tahini sauce scattered with parsley. Normally a dish like that would arrive with bread on the side, but Zaken said they liked the idea of sealing them together in harmony.

In the bowl, you'll find whole quartered onions and pulpy tomatoes that you can mash with the bulbs of ground meat and eat with the crispy baked bread. It's a show-stopping dish that feels perfectly tailored for Instagram, and yet, very much older than all that.

Paprika, 8 Bond St., Great Neck, 516-304-5960, paprikacater.com. Open Monday-Wednesday noon-10 p.m., Thursday noon-11 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sunday noon-4 p.m. and 5-11 p.m.

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.