![]() Still, Almosawi and his employees offer warm greetings to whoever enters Zamzam. Trepidation, and worse: An act of arson destroyed one of Zamzam’s delivery trucks a year ago. Fear of the unknown combined with political hype can combine to cause trepidation for those unfamiliar with Iraqi culture and food. Running an import market can be a difficult proposition for immigrants, and a Middle Eastern market comes with particular challenges. And instead of being dry and thin, like most packaged pita, or fat and fluffy in the style of Greek diners, this bread is chewy and just a little stretchy, with a porous interior and a blistered skin - charred in places - that’s almost crackly, but not quite. But Zamzam’s flatbread is a good fourteen inches in diameter and has no pocket in the middle. ![]() Like pita, the flatbread, called khubz, is baked round and flat in a super-hot dome oven (often plastered to the inner wall of the oven). Owner Mohammed Almosawi is a native of Basra, Iraq, and one of the specialties of his shop is fresh-baked Iraqi flatbread that’s about as far from standard pita bread as Denver is from Basra. ![]() Located at the corner of East Iliff Avenue and South Quebec Street on Denver’s eastern frontier (technically in a no-man’s land between Denver and Aurora), the market caters to the area’s Muslim community with halal meat and plenty of imported goods for preparing the traditional dishes of a number of Middle Eastern countries. ![]() Zamzam is also the name of a local Middle Eastern market, deli and bakery that makes a style of flatbread that’s a small miracle itself. Zamzam is the name of the holy well in the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia legend has it that water miraculously sprang from the desert to ease the thirst of Abraham’s infant son, Ishmael. ![]()
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