The new kosher Malawach Kitchen is serving the flaky Yemenite favorite in midtown

Midtown Manhattan has no shortage of kosher food, but a kitchen devoted almost entirely to malawach? That’s something new and oh-so-exciting.

The Malawach Kitchen is now operating out of the Picnic food hall at 245 West 46th Street, near Eighth Avenue, serving a dozen or so interpretations of the flaky Yemenite Jewish flatbread. The OU-certified, Chalav Yisrael operation is a ghost kitchen, which means there is no conventional dining room: orders are only available for takeout and delivery.

For the unfamiliar, malawach is a laminated, pan-fried dough traditionally served with grated tomato, zhug and hard-boiled eggs. It resembles a thick pancake but eats more like the buttery, crispy offspring of a croissant and flatbread—which also makes it an unusually capable vehicle for basically anything you might be craving.

The Malawach Kitchen clearly understands the assignment: its menu treats the bread less as a sacred object than as a canvas, piling it with everything from shakshuka to truffle mushrooms.

The shakshuka malawach, for example, features two sunny-side-up eggs and a mildly spicy garlic-and-jalapeño tomato sauce. There is also a tuna melt version, a particularly indulgent combination of lox, eggs, onions, sour cream and dill (how New York, right?) and a Caprese topped with fresh mozzarella, pesto, basil, tomatoes, olive oil and balsamic glaze.

Things get even more maximalist in the menu’s pizza-adjacent section: the vodka parm comes layered with creamy vodka sauce, mozzarella and shaved Parmesan, while the garlic parm adds garlic butter and the truffle mushroom piles on sautéed mushrooms, cheese and plenty of earthy truffle flavor. In other words, these are not the restrained malawach plates you may remember from an Israeli breakfast table.

Dessert is equally playful, with sweet versions inspired by Lotus cookies, apple pie and even peanut butter and jelly. The kitchen proudly cooks with peanut oil instead of seed oils, a detail worth noting both for the ingredient-conscious crowd and, more importantly, anyone with a peanut allergy.

Most malawach dishes cost between $20 and $30, and several come with two bourekas and a side salad, transforming what could have been a quick pastry fix into a fairly substantial lunch.

Between the midtown location, the deeply nostalgic base ingredient and the unapologetically over-the-top toppings, The Malawach Kitchen feels designed for both Yemenite-food loyalists and diners whose ideal meal involves melted cheese stretching dramatically across an Instagram Reel. Frankly, there is room in the kosher landscape for both.