A Bistro With Shish Barak

Huda impressively balances its many influences.

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

The region we now call the Levant from the French for "rising," like the sun, a nod to its placement on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean-stretches across Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, through Syria and Jordan. It is a place of civilization's beginning, part of the so-called Fertile Crescent, home to some of mankind's earliest agricultural experiments as well as the site of current and intractable conflict.

It's heartening, at a disheartening moment, to visit Huda, a "new Levantine bistro" in Williamsburg. Its owner, Gehad Hadidi-who in 2019 bought midtown's La Bonne Soupe, a more traditional bistro with Burgundy snails, niçoise salad, and moules frites-is of Palestinian and Syrian ancestry with a Jordanian passport; its chef, Omneyah Hassan, who previously cooked at Celestine and Pasquale Jones, is of Egyptian descent.