Bite-sized review: Kosher vegetarian bowls at Hummus Factory in Boca Raton

Up to five times a day, fresh batches of ground chickpeas are whipped into smooth and creamy goodness at Hummus Factory in Boca Raton, blended with olive oil, lemon, garlic and a hit of tahini to give a hint of sesame. The hummus sits in a big serving bowl behind the counter, ready to be spooned into smaller bowls — porcelain to stay, plastic to go — for customers who stream through.

Then comes the fun. Vegetables and other toppings — sauteed cauliflower, zucchini, mushrooms, falafel, boiled eggs in tomato sauce, vegan shawarma — are scooped into a divot at the center of the hummus. A finishing swirl of olive oil is applied. A warm, chewy and puffy pita is placed in a wicker basket for those who eat in, or wrapped for takeout. Little cups of pickles and two kinds of pepper sauce — fiery red and milder green — accompany each setup.

Take your tray, find a table and then marvel at the satisfying simplicity of a kosher, vegetarian meal. The hefty pita, unsliced, looks more like a Brooklyn bialy than the thin, flimsy pockets served at many local Mediterranean and Middle Eastern eateries.

“Those thin ones always crumble and break apart when you’re eating it,” says Oron Gal, co-founder of Hummus Factory. “These hold up.”

The sturdy pitas are baked fresh three times daily at Hummus Factory’s flagship Hollywood location, which opened in summer 2016. Pita deliveries are made twice daily to the Boca location, which opened last month in a busy strip shopping center just off North Federal Highway.

Judging by the lunchtime crowd the day I ate, Gal and co-founder Tal Sasson have a hit on their hands. Gal says the Boca location is already nearly matching the revenue of the Hollywood location, on Stirling Road near I-95. More Hummus Factories are being planned for Aventura, Sunny Isles, midtown Miami and Brickell.

“With all the Chipotles and Moe’s [Southwest Grills] of the world, we figured this would be appealing to those who want to eat healthy and vegetarian,” Gal says. As a certified kosher restaurant that closes for the Jewish sabbath on Friday evenings and Saturday, the eatery also appeals to South Florida’s Israeli and Jewish communities.

“I was born here in America and Tal was born in Israel and we both like food,” Gal says. “We didn’t have any background in the restaurant business but we both eat a lot. We decided to give this a try.”

The bowls ($10-$13) make for a filling high-protein (but not low calorie) lunch. I had the shakshuka version ($11.90), hummus topped with chopped boiled eggs in a hearty tomato sauce with a sprinkling of parsley. Mixed with the pickles and hot sauces and smeared on a torn-off hunk of pita, it hit all the pleasing texture, flavor and temperature notes — smooth, crunchy and chewy, spicy, salty and sweet, warm and cold.

Besides the hummus bowls, the Hummus Factory also offers faux shawarma wraps (made with soy) and pitas stuffed with falafel (fried chickpeas). I tried a side Israeli salad ($5.50), a cool, chopped concoction of finely diced cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and parsley, mixed with a tangy lemon and olive oil dressing. The dish goes perfectly with South Florida heat and humidity.

The only glitch came when the clerk rang up my order. My total seemed too high. An extra hummus tahini bowl ($9.90) had been added to my tab. Instead of voiding and redoing the credit card transaction during the hectic lunch rush, she said she would bring me a cash refund later in the meal. But it never came.

I went back to the counter when I was done, but by then I had changed my thinking. Forget the cash. I took another hummus to go.

Hummus Factory, 515 NE 20th St., Boca Raton, 561-245-8965, and 2790 Stirling Road, Hollywood, 954-927-3225, Hummus-Factory.com, open 11 a..m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Friday, closed Saturdays.

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