Introduction to Sara’s Market and Bakery
Past cases of produce and shelves of spices, there’s a small counter tucked inside a grocery store in a Richardson industrial park where skewers of beef, chicken and lamb sizzle over open flames.
Michael Hogue
You wouldn’t know it from the outside, but family-owned Sara’s Market and Bakery — which got its start in 1998 as a pita bakery — makes some of the most beloved kebabs and pita wraps in North Texas.
The four-seat Lebanese grill counter at Sara’s Market has been around for the better part of a decade, and it’s become one of Richardson’s if-you-know-you-know spots.
The cornerstone of the grill counter is undoubtedly the pita, which is used for the four wraps on the menu and served alongside plates of meat and rice. The family behind Sara’s Market still own and operate their Garland pita factory that now churns out 100,000 pieces of pita a day for wholesale orders.
The kefta pita wrap at Sara’s Market and Bakery is made with a 60/40 blend of beef and lamb.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Eat Drink D-FW
The Pita
Made with five ingredients including proprietary flour from a mill outside Fort Worth, the pita is thin and soft but not brittle. Zaid Bayan, chief strategy officer of Sara’s Market and one of the sons of its founders Waleed Bayan and Khaloud Mirza, likes to demonstrate this by balling up a piece of pita in his fist like paper to show how it unfolds back to its shape without a single tear.
The other elements of Sara’s wraps are nothing novel, but they’re demonstrative of impactful simplicity, particularly the meat. Both the beef and the chicken, which come from the market’s butcher counter, are marinated in blends of spices. The chicken for the shish tawook gets its flavor and color from marinating in roasted red bell pepper paste, and the beef tenderloin has a subtle earthy tang from sumac. The kefta, which is a 60/40 blend of beef and lamb, is mixed with onion, parsley, allspice, salt and pepper.
The meat is grilled hot and fast. Unless you ask for it to be cooked longer, the beef usually comes out as a spot-on medium rare to just under medium — impressive for a small takeaway spot.
“You don’t need a complicated recipe for it to be good,” said Jean Nassar, Sara’s Market’s culinary director.
