Middle Eastern Food
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50 free Middle Eastern Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Middle Eastern food starts where farming started: wheat was first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, fermentation was discovered there, and the oldest written recipes come from Mesopotamia. What followed is a table of meze and flatbread, lamb and yogurt, sesame and sumac, stretching from Egypt's ful and koshary to Jordan's mansaf, Syria's kibbeh, Turkey's doner and the Gulf's kabsa. These 50 questions cover the dishes and the details: what hummus and tahini are made of, where falafel came from, what shawarma's name means, which grain goes into kibbeh and tabbouleh, why Knafeh Nabulseyeh is named for Nablus, what mulukhiyah is actually made from, and how Turkish coffee, arak, ayran and jallab are served. There are questions on the rules of the table too: the right hand, taarof, Afiyet olsun and the four days of Eid al-Adha. Easy questions cover the famous dips, breads and sweets; the expert tier asks about smen, qatir, Gaziantep's pistachios, the Janissaries' baklava and the brewery that was once the region's only one. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for a food night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Levantine dip is mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice and garlic?
Hummus
Hummus set off a record war: chefs in Israel and near Beirut kept outdoing each other's giant platters, until 300 cooks served up more than 10 tonnes of it in 2010.
Q 02Which deep-fried balls of ground chickpeas are a Levantine street-food staple, tucked into flatbread with tahini sauce?
Falafel
Falafel starts with dried chickpeas that are soaked overnight but never boiled, because cooked or canned ones make the balls fall apart in the hot oil.
Q 03Which Levantine street food takes its name from the Turkish çevirme, meaning 'turning'?
Shawarma
Shawarma sailed to Mexico with Ottoman-era emigrants from the Levant, where cooks loaded the turning spit with chili-rubbed pork and created tacos al pastor.
Q 04Baklava is a layered nut-filled dessert made from which pastry?
Filo
Filo dough is stretched paper-thin, and baklava stacks sheet after sheet of it, each one brushed with melted butter before baking.
Q 05Tabbouleh is a salad of soaked cracked wheat and which finely chopped herb?
Parsley
Parsley is the bulk of a classic tabbouleh, with only a little grain added for texture; versions made abroad often flip the ratio.
Q 06What is tahini made from?
Ground sesame seeds
Ground sesame seeds make an oily paste, and cooks thin it with lemon juice, garlic and water into tarator, a sauce served with fish and vegetables.
Q 07Baba ghanoush is a dip made from which roasted vegetable?
Eggplant
Eggplant is charred over coals or an open flame until it collapses, which gives the dip its smoky flavour and leaves the flesh soft enough to mash.
Q 08Za'atar is a blend of dried herbs, sesame seeds, salt and which red spice?
Sumac
Sumac berries are dried and ground into a crimson powder, and their sharp lemony tang is what turns the herb blend sour.
Q 09Which Jordanian national dish is meat cooked in fermented dried yogurt and served on rice?
Mansaf
Mansaf is traditionally eaten from one shared platter with the right hand only, while the left stays tucked behind the back.
Q 10Kibbeh is made by pounding spiced ground meat together with which grain?
Bulgur
Bulgur and meat were pounded to a paste in a big stone mortar; a 19th-century missionary wrote that every family owned one and the thudding filled the streets.
Q 11Knafeh Nabulseyeh, the usual variant in Jordan and Palestine, is named for which city?
Nablus
Nablus set a Guinness record in 2009 with a 74-metre knafeh weighing 1,765 kg.
Q 12Mulukhiyah, the Egyptian soup-stew, is made from the leaves of which plant?
Jute
Jute is far better known for its stem fibre, which is spun into burlap sacks and twine; in the kitchen it is the leaves that matter, and boiling them turns the broth thick and slippery.
Q 13Dolma, the family of vegetable and vine-leaf dishes, takes its name from a Turkish word meaning what?
Stuffed
Stuffed is the literal sense, and what goes inside decides how dolma is served: meatless rice versions are eaten cold as a starter, while meat-filled ones come to the table hot.
Q 21Muhammara, a red dip of walnuts and peppers, comes from which Syrian city?
Aleppo
Aleppo is where the dip began, yet in 2022 it was Gaziantep, just over the Turkish border, that registered muhammara as its own protected regional speciality.
Q 22Manakish flatbreads were traditionally baked first thing in the morning in what?
A communal oven
A communal oven baked the rounds, but fingertips shape them first: the dough is pressed all over into little dimples so the oil-and-thyme topping pools in place.
Q 23Maqluba, a Levantine rice dish, is named in Arabic for the way it is served, meaning what?
Upside-down
Upside-down is exactly how it arrives: the pot of layered meat, vegetables and rice is flipped onto a platter and lifted away, leaving a cake-shaped tower with the bottom layer on top.
Q 14Which Cypriot cheese has a high melting point and a famously 'squeaky' texture?
Halloumi
Halloumi is thought to have begun as a nomads' cheese, prized by Bedouin herders because it kept so well; today the name is legally reserved for cheese made in Cyprus.
Q 15Which cold, salted yogurt drink is a Turkish national drink?
Ayran
Ayran got a political push in 2013, when prime minister Erdoğan told an alcohol-policy conference in Istanbul that it, and not beer, was Turkey's national drink.
Q 16What is Egypt's national street dish of pasta, rice, lentils and chickpeas in red sauce?
Koshary
Koshary as traditionally made has no meat, eggs or dairy: every layer is a humble store-cupboard staple, so the country's favourite street food happens to be vegan.
Q 17Ful medames, an Egyptian staple, is a stew of which legume?
Fava beans
Fava beans for this stew are traditionally left to simmer through the night, because ful is above all a breakfast: by morning the pot is ready to be dressed with cumin, lemon and oil.
Q 18Fattoush is a Levantine salad distinguished by pieces of what?
Toasted pita
Toasted pita gives stale bread a second life: fattoush belongs to a whole family of dishes invented to use up yesterday's flatbread instead of throwing it away.
Q 19Shakshouka is eggs poached in a sauce based mainly on what?
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a New World crop that reached the Mediterranean only in the 16th century, so this old-seeming North African dish cannot be any older than that.
Q 20The doner kebab sandwich was popularised in the 1970s in which city?
West Berlin
West Berlin is where Kadir Nurman opened his stall in 1972: he had seen how rushed the city's workers were, so he tucked the carved meat into flatbread to be eaten on the go.
Q 24Lahmacun is nicknamed 'Turkish pizza' though it traditionally has no cheese and no what?
Tomato sauce
Tomato sauce has no place on lahmacun, which is eaten nothing like pizza: the thin round gets parsley and a squeeze of lemon, then is folded or rolled up in the hand.
Q 25Freekeh is made from durum wheat harvested at what stage?
While still green
While still green the grain is too moist to catch, so when the piled sheaves are set alight only the straw and chaff burn away, leaving smoky kernels to be rubbed clean.
Q 26Qamar al-Din, drunk during Ramadan, is a thick sweet drink made from which fruit?
Apricots
Apricots are dried into sheets of fruit leather, a Syrian speciality, and the Ramadan drink is that leather turned back into a thick nectar.
Q 27Which sweet fruit is traditionally the first thing eaten at iftar, the sunset meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast?
Dates
Dates open the meal because the Prophet Muhammad is said to have broken his own fast with them, so the first bite after sunset follows his example.
Q 28Arak, the Levantine spirit served with meze, is flavoured with what?
Aniseed
Aniseed oil dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so the moment water is added the clear spirit turns a cloudy, milky white.
Q 29What is the small long-handled pot used to brew unfiltered Turkish-style coffee called?
Cezve
Cezve coffee is served with the grounds still in it, and once the cup is drained the patterns they leave behind are often read as the drinker's fortune.
Q 30Arabic coffee is typically spiced with what and served without sugar?
Cardamom
Cardamom-scented coffee comes with strict etiquette: the host pours for elders and honoured guests first, then works around the room by age and standing.