Falafel Tanami, a tiny Brooklyn restaurant that’s been named to the New York Times’ list of 100 best restaurants in the city two years in a row, is expanding to Manhattan.
The Midwood eatery is opening a second location in Tribeca on Aug. 14, the store’s owner told the New York Jewish Week.
“Baruch Hashem,”said Galit Tanami, using the Hebrew for “thank God,” when she shared the news. Tanami, who owns the store with her husband, Ronen, added that the restaurant — which will operate in partnership with the kosher Juice Press location at 415 Greenwich St. — received its kosher certificate yesterday.
“They share our commitment to creating exceptional plant-based food and we couldn’t be more excited to collaborate on their first store outside of Brooklyn,” Juice Press announced on social media. The original founder of Juice Press, Marcus Antebi, grew up in a Syrian Jewish family in Brooklyn. Opened in 2010, Juice Press now has more than 50 locations in New York City and another 30 stores across the United States.
The Tanamis opened their kosher falafel shop — which serves affordable, crispy balls of falafel and other bites popular in Israel, like shakshuka and sabich — in Midwood in 2016, using Ronen’s grandmother’s falafel recipe.
Business boomed last summer after the eatery was first named to the Times’ list. “Now everybody wants to try it,” Tanami told the New York Jewish Week last June about her restaurant’s signature dish.
“The falafel are extraordinary,” critic Pete Wells wrote in his 2023 review. “The thick cushions of pita, baked to order, may be better yet. It’s hard not to go wild with the salads and vegetables and garlic, all as fresh as if you were standing in a market in Tel Aviv.”
At the time, Tanami told the New York Jewish Week that she was considering expanding, but said, “We don’t need to rush this.”
“If I open something, I need to be there,” she added. “I’m a perfectionist. I wouldn’t be able to go home.”
This is not the first time Falafel Tanami has expanded: In 2021, the couple opened Shawarma Tanami, focusing on the shaved meat, on Coney Island Avenue in Midwood. The spot closed after less than a year.
Falafel Tanami was also named to the New York Jewish Week’s list of 18 essential Israeli restaurants in NYC.
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