Kan Zeman

I love the baba ghanoush! I’ve been eating Mediterranean food most of my life and didn’t care much for it but now I can’t get enough of it. The fresh falafel are crispy and delicious. There are several options for different tastes. I’ve introduced people to Mediterranean food through this restaurant and its been a positive experience each time.

I know Kan Zeman is no longer but the Manssaf-​al-​Jordanian (sp?), a dish of yogurt-​braised lamb shank over rice, was the best entrée I’ve eaten at any restaurant in downtown Palo Alto.
Thinking about it… every restaurant I liked on University Avenue has closed down in the last decade. No wonder I don’t go there anymore :-(
Fun belly dancing!

It’s CLOSED! :(
And i was going to wax eloquent about how I used to come here since high school and i love their okra dish (And i don’t normally like okra) and i love their wraps with eggplant and. :(:(:(

I am a fan of their falafel plate. It was super duper yummy… perfectly crisp outter shell and moist, flavorful ball of bean. They threw in a generous pack of pita bread that was fresh and warm.
What was disappointing was we ordered mansaaf (take-​out) and the waiter even repeated it, but what we found in our container when we got home was braised lamb shank, Maybe they forgot the throw the aged yogurt on top? The dish wasn’t bad, although the rice was a salt bomb. Ya just like to eat what ya ordered. Knaw wha mean?!
We also bought a container of their Turkish delight. I’ve never had it before so have nothing to compare theirs with but I thought it overly sweet and would never order it again.
That said, I’ll be back just for the falafel plate cuz it was yummy to the max.

I ordered from Kam Zeman for an event at work that I needed to have catered. I was able to print the ordersheet off their website and faxed in my order. They said they only need a days notice but I did it four days in advance just to be on the safe side. I confirmed the order the day before just to make sure they had the date/​time/​order correct.
The day of the event the driver got lost and could not find our building. Luckily I met him part way and we got everything set up in time. The food was really good, everyone thought it was a hit. The food was fresh but a bit on the pricey side if you’re thinking of having them cater an event.
I would definitely give them a try the next time I’m in downtown Palo Alto.

Palo Alto’s best kept secret: Kan Zeman!
We dropped in for a late dinner. Big crowd and surprised to be seated so quickly. Server was very helpful and explained al the day’s specials. I enjoyed a nice Lebanese lager and ordered beef kabob. We also ordered the falafel.
Everything was great. Im picky about my rice but their version was good though not persian style.
Service was 5 stars and the price very reasonable.
We’ll be back next time we’re in the area!

Kan Zeman has a perfect view of University Ave. You can be strolling by leisurely and drop by here for food.
The lentil soup is really good. However, the rest of the meal was pretty mediocre. I had the Petra chicken and was not impressed. I’m not sure if other dishes are the same but I’ll update this review if I have better luck.

I’ve probably eaten 10 or more times at Kan Zeman in the past year. So, you could say that I’ve become a regular.
I have invited friends several of those times, and I have never had an incident where something inappropriate was brought or happened. That is saying a lot. That means that Kan Zeman has risen above the usual «that meal was great» to the level of «that experience was great». And they have done it time and time again. It is not often that you can find a restaurant, or even more generally, a business that can offer a consistently high level of service and product.
Kan Zeman is the bomb.
I will continue recommending it to friends and to you.
Notable dishes include:
Vegetarian Combo
Mujadarah
Petra Chicken
Manssaf (lamb)
My mouth is salivating just thinking of these dishes… I want to go back.
(And I just was there last night.)

Yup… I agree with the 3.5 stars. its truly right on.
Seating was abundant with options of interior or closer to the windows and even several small tables outside. They seemed to be overwhelmed with only 2 servers handling the tables, but they did a fine job and our server was friendly if not the fastest.
To start they provide warm pita bread with a sesame vinegar dip. We had the Combo Plate with chicken shawerma, hummus, falafel, tabouleh, baba ghanoush, dolma, and Mediterranean salad and lentil soup. All these items tasted good and I was only able to finish half of the food.
Someone else had the falafel plate, and the vegetarian magluba which looked great and included house special rice mixed with eggplant and cauliflower, topped with roasted pine nuts, almonds, and parsley, as well as laban salad.
Everyone was satisfied with their meals… so yeah, it was all tasty. Thus the solid rating.

Mediterranean sounded like the perfect food to soak up the undisclosed amount of wine we had just consumed. Enter Kan Zeman.
Complimentary fresh warm pita bread, why yes of course. The yummy sesame vinegar dip was amazing.
Combo Mazzat: Hummus, Baba Ghanoush, Tabouleh, 2 Falafels and a Mediterranean salad. I mean this «appetizer» was a meal in itself. The Falafels were the best I’ve ever had. Hummus was perfection.
Chicken and beef — thinly sliced beef and marinated chicken with drizzled tahini sauce. One word to describe — Scrumdiddlyumptious!
Our superb server was just incredible. He seemed to know exactly what we wanted and made excellent recommendations. He was SO awesome in fact that he gave us complimentary Pistachio Baklava for dessert… SCORE!

Tasty, yummy and exactly what one would expect. The food was fine but the décor seemed ho hum at best. As I sat there wondering what was wrong, it occurred to me that my issue was personal. This kind of place makes me miss my beloved 2 – 9 café. I should review that next as I never did in school. That baggage unloaded, I suppose I can’t give an objective review of any place like this. I will say that in spite of my nutty loyalty to the 2 – 9, I did enjoy my food here, very good Amman chicken. Enough said.

Jordanian food in Palo Alto? Yes, I had to check this place out.
I had amman chicken — chicken breast in a spicy tomato sauce with olives, artichoke hearts, tomatoes and mushrooms. It came with rice and veggies. The dish was delicious, but it was soaking in oil! It made it kind of hard to eat it all, although I have a weakness for anything tomato based. This also came with lentil soup or Caesar salad. The lentil soup was delicious. I had a few bites of the hummus, which was tasty and the cucumbers in yogurt. Also delicious. I just can’t give 4 stars for something so oily. :(

Went here for dinner on a Friday night. Palo Alto is kinda out of my way, especially since I live in the city and had to take Caltrain, but, based on what I ordered, I’d say the experience was worth it.
At the start of the meal, they bring out hot pitas with a dipping sauce that is sort of like a pesto, except it has sesame seeds in it. This dipping sauce immediately won me over.
Since it had been several months since I had had decent Mediterranean food, I decided to go all out and and order the platter so I could sample their version of the following staples:
Dolmas = excellent. Just the right amount of saltiness, not too tart
Baba ghanoush = decent. not the best i ever had (this rare honor belongs to an establishment in Dearborn, Michigan), but passable
Hummus = decent
Mediterranean salad (cucumber and tomato) = way yummy!
Tabouleh = disappointing
Shawerma meat = pretty good. if you order the meat, it’s lamb and beef ground together. I would’ve preferred straight-​up lamb, but it’s not bad, it just doesn’t have as robust of a flavor as lamb only
Falafel = one of the better falafels I’ve had. crunchy but not too hard. small and easily edible
Service was laid back and friendly.
Important: If you order the Turkish coffee at the end of your amazing Mediterranean meal, DO NOT STIR IT! the result will taste like tar and be very sludge-​y. I made the mistake of stirring it, and the waitress had to bring me a new one. The add the sugar in for you, so there is no need to add sugar, nor is there a need to stir it.

Hahaha, Palo Alto is full of YUPPIES. We were having lunch at Kan Zeman after a day at the Stanford museum, doing some people watching, and I saw a guy with a polo shirt and a pink sweater around his shoulders being absolutely fucking serious.
Anyway.
Yeah, the waiters took a little while to take our order, and the beer shouldn’t have been $ 6 a bottle (COME. ON.). If the pricing was a little better, it would have been four stars easy, because the lentil soup was really good, and my veggie combo plate was near perfect. I usually can’t stand dolmas, but these were delicious. The falafel was really moist, which I love, and the hummus was perfect.
My lunch companions were also pleased with their meals, but we did all agree that three beers for the price of eighteen was a pretty shitty deal.
Really though, the yuppie watching is fantastic.

First of all I really like the food at this place. Its closer to what real med food tastes like as opposed to the many knockoffs that places try to put out. Their food is warm and earthy and delicious.
The service is on the iffy side. Im not big on people that hover around my table. I understand if you’re busy you want to get people in and out there at a reasonable pace. But I don’t like the feeling of being scooted out. Maybe I would like some more water or to order dessert…

I’d eaten at Kan Zeman a few times a few years ago, so when i found myself hungry on University avenue, i decided to stop in.
In the past, i’d nearly always ordered the mujadara, and enjoyed it, but this time i got the falafel wrap. I’m actually a little bit impressed that their falafel was both burnt and mushy, but not in a good way. It was barely edible, and the rest of the wrap was just salad, so it had no particularly redeeming factors.
Two stars for good service, and fond memories.

After watching it linger on my bookmark list for awhile, I finally had the chance to check out Kan Zeman for lunch. And since I didn’t know when I’d have the chance to come back, ordering was easy: the combination plate w/​schwarma. That way I could try a little bit of everything.
Let the over-​analysis begin:
– Hummus: surprisingly bland. So much so that other patrons probably saw me squinting in concentration (trying to detect some kind of flavor).
– Beef/​lamb schwarma: Nicely spiced with good flavor but far too many pieces that were 100% fat. Hint to proprieters — leave these pieces off the plate next time
– Falafel (2): Freshly made (yay!) but slightly too soft and oily for my taste. I prefer a little more crispiness
– Med Salad: Fresh but no dressing I could detect. Tomatoes were underripe.
– Dolmas (2): avg sized but much denser and drier than I am used to
– Baba Ghanoush: The strangest I’ve ever had; basically yogurt sauce with pieces of eggplant in it. Not to my liking
– Tabouleh: No bulgar that I could detect; just a whole lot of parsley with a few tomato bits. Yawn.
Total cost for the above was $ 11.99, not bad considering the amount and variety of food I received. Unfortunately, this is a sit-​down restaurant, rather than a order-​at-​the-​counter place, so tipping for a server is involved. Consequently, after tax and tip I was poorer by $ 15.50. Not exactly a bargain for lunch.
Service was good; Ambiance was in-​your-​face Mediterranean, tasteful yet a bit overdone.
I would come back here for dinner to try one of their specialty dishes, but I doubt I will be back for lunch. The prices are too high and the lunch menu is too limited.

I love Mediterranean food but I can not stand overcooked meat. I got the combo dinner which comes with 4 meats, each of which were grilled to imperfection. The spices were a little heavy for my taste even though I love strong flavors.
Sultana would be a better choice if you’re craving the Falafel or Moussaka.

My favorite Jordanian restaurant in Palo Alto :) Also, my favorite middle eastern food in the Bay Area, and actually the best I’ve had since moving back from the Middle East.
I’ve been here twice — friendly staff, huge portions, and, for Palo Alto, pretty good pricing (in UAE I could have the same $ 20 meal for $ 3, of course, but UAE doesn’t have a Fry’s, or an Equniox, or Facebook, or Stanford, …)
First time, eat in, I had one of the specialties — basically rice + ground beef + spices. Sounds simple, but tastes great. Second time, a schwarma plate. My companion the first time ordered a bit too much of something else, but I didn’t taste it.
This is probably my current favorite restaurant in downtown Palo Alto.

There is something about walking down University drive at Palo Alto that really sooths you. There were plenty of fantastic shops and terrific restaurants along that stretch. Parking may sucked, but it’s goes along with any shopping plazas.
I had a fantastic time up at Northern California the last time I visited my friend and he gladly wanted to show me what are some of the hot spots up in various part of NoCal. One of the place he wanted to show me was the shopping district up here in Palo Alto very close to the University.
After our encounter in the Facebook building (which is overrated), we decided to stop here at Kan Zeman. We didn’t have too much of an expectations and we were not going to order too much since we ate dim sum at Loon Wah earlier in the afternoon.
The place is pretty unique with abstract looking table carvings and some weird looking table settings on the table. We could have been amusing ourselves just with the tables, but we are just happy to dine inside of the place since it was a little warm on the outside.
We decided to order just little nibblets of desserts like the Turkish delights (think mochi). We had some really nice hot chai brewing in this nice looking glass. I also had a can of orangina and a Turkish coffee. Yeah, I know… I’m a big spender and have a huge water tank stored for all the liquids I’m going to drink.
The service was actually pretty good considering we didn’t ordered very much and pretty much gave us all the time we need to relaxed ourselves. It was strangely busy on a late afternoon, but I see a lot of loyal customers come here often.
Our next door neighboring table let us sample a delicious beef shawerma. Taco in Greek style! Very delicious and I definitely want to come back here for that.
Yeah I know, it’s a place to trying to do too much according to the other reviewers and I don’t blamed them. I am not quite sure myself if they were Middle Eastern, or Mediterranean, or even just seafood restaurant. They seemed to cover a lot of different specialties food at this restaurant. They also have a belly dancer performance on Friday and Saturday night.
Too bad I would have gladly partake in that dinner extravaganza with the belly dancer. It doesn’t seemed too much of a hassles with them having us here ordering small items and I really appreciated them for that to let us enjoy our dining in peace.
A real nice comforting place in a great area for shopping. Go on the far east end where the parking garage is at or you’ll have to find parking south of this street.