Through a new partnership with the distributed restaurant service Local Kitchens, the Bay Area’s iconic Oren’s Hummus has arrived in the East Bay, beginning in Lafayette, California.
Oren’s Hummus makes the best hummus in the Bay Area. Frequented by many in the region’s tech industry, the Israeli restaurant has popular locations in downtown Palo Alto and Mountain View, as well as Cupertino (right next to Apple’s HQ), Los Gatos, and in the Financial District downtown. The Cupertino location is especially upscale, and a favorite meeting place of Silicon Valley tech execs.
Oren’s serves a variety of Israeli and Middle Eastern specialties, but the local chain’s crown jewel is its hummus. Served in ample bowls, Oren’s hummus comes plain or can be topped with everything from beets to spiced lamb to chicken liver. Each bowl is served with fluffy (and massive) chunks of homemade pita bread (plain or whole wheat), and guests can opt for other dipping sauces too, like labneh and tzatziki sauce. Other Israeli specialties like shakshuka make an appearance on Oren’s menu, too.
For those unacquainted with hummus, the Middle Eastern specialty food consists of ground chickpeas, olive oil, and tahini (a kind of peanut-butter-like confection made from sesame seeds). Here in the States, hummus is usually a dip or side dish, served with veggies. You might have seen it alongside ranch dressing in a big platter of crudité at a dinner party or conference, for example. Our hummus is usually mass-produced and lifeless.
In Israel and throughout the Middle East, though, hummus is something entirely different. It’s a main dish and even a source of intense regional and national rivalries. Many restaurants (and whole countries) feel that they have the best hummus, and different styles abound. In a famously contentious region of the world, though, hummus can also be a unifying force. Despite bitter national disagreements, many Middle Eastern countries share a love of hummus, and people will even cross borders (either national or within a city or even an individual souk) to try out a rival nation’s hummus (and usually to conclude that theirs is better).
Oren’s brings a taste of that rich cultural tradition to the States. And now, the restaurant brings its hummus pedigree to the East Bay through Local Kitchens, a Lafayette, California distributed restaurant location that features food from several San Francisco restaurants. Patrons in Lafayette can’t order from Oren’s full menu, but they can get a sampling of the chain’s most popular items, including hummus bowls topped with beets, eggplant, meats, stewed mushrooms, and more. Also on offer is the restaurant’s plain hummus, as well as falafel and a variety of packaged dips.
If you think you’ll need to order multiple bowls to satisfy your appetite at lunch, think again. Hummus is remarkably filling, in part because tahini is almost as calorically dense as peanut butter. One bowl of Oren’s Hummus, especially accompanied by pita bread, is more than I can usually eat for lunch. If you order Oren’s from Local Kitchens, make sure to ask for utensils. There’s nothing wrong with eating hummus directly with a spoon, and you’ll only receive a few pieces of pita with your order, so you’ll likely need a utensil to finish up your bowl.
If you try Oren’s in Lafayette and love it as much as I do, make sure to visit one of the restaurant’s other locations in the Bay Area. Eating at Oren’s signature locations in Mountain View or Palo Alto is a special experience, and you might just rub elbows (literally — the restaurants are small and patrons sit close together) with Silicon Valley tech royalty.
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Oren’s brings a taste of Israel and the Middle East to the East Bay, and the Bay Area more broadly. Now we just need another big hummus restaurant to set up shop in the area, to bring the Middle East’s hummus rivalries home.
