Richardson’s North Greenville Avenue corridor has been quietly building one of the most interesting concentrations of Middle Eastern food in North Texas for years. Most people driving through haven’t noticed. Salam Grill at 329 N. Greenville Avenue is a good reason to start paying attention.
The restaurant rebranded earlier this year under new ownership from the Albaghdady Restaurant that occupied the same space for three years before it. Owner Sam Raad brought the Salam Grill name from a Damascus original that opened in 1992 — a concept that has since operated in Dubai, Boston, and Tampa. The Richardson location is the brand’s Texas debut, serving Syrian and Iraqi cuisine over wood charcoal grills in a clean, welcoming room that fills up fast on weekends. Halal certified throughout.
Before getting to the menu, it helps to understand what Iraqi food actually is — because most Americans haven’t had it, and most of what passes for Middle Eastern food in the United States doesn’t reflect it accurately. Iraqi cuisine is one of the oldest on earth. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers — ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq — produced the first recorded recipes in human history, inscribed on clay tablets by Babylonian scribes around 1700 BC. The Sumerians were cultivating wheat, barley, lentils, onions, dates, and olives in this same soil four thousand years before that. When Baghdad became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate in the medieval Islamic Golden Age, the Iraqi kitchen reached a level of refinement that influenced cooking across the entire known world. That history shows up on the plate in ways that distinguish it from Lebanese, Turkish, or Persian food — all of which are neighbors and relatives, but not the same thing.
What sets Iraqi cooking apart is its use of spice as fragrance rather than heat. Cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, dried lime, tamarind, and saffron build depth without building fire. The cooking is patient — slow braises, carefully grilled meats, flatbreads baked to order in tandoor ovens. The flavors are complex in a way that sneaks up on you. Nothing at a good Iraqi table announces itself loudly. It earns your attention over the course of a meal.
At Salam Grill the entry point is the appetizer spread, and it’s the right place to start. The hummus is made fresh, smooth, and finished with olive oil — nothing jarred, nothing sitting in a cooler. The tabbouleh is bright and herb-forward, the parsley to bulgur ratio leaning heavily toward the parsley the way it should. The fattoush salad brings crunch from toasted pita chips over fresh greens dressed with pomegranate molasses and lemon. Order all three and let them arrive while the grill gets to work on the main event.
The grill is the heart of the operation. Every kebab and tikka at Salam is cooked over real wood charcoal — not gas, not electric, wood. The smoke is part of the flavor profile. The beef kebab is the benchmark: seasoned ground beef pressed onto flat skewers, charred at the edges and pink in the middle, served with grilled tomatoes, onion, and flatbread. The lamb tikka is cut from the shoulder, marinated, and grilled over the same coals — tender enough to pull apart without any resistance, with the fat rendering into the char in a way that only happens with high, direct heat. The chicken shawarma is layered and sliced to order, served in warm bread with garlic sauce and pickled vegetables. The beef shawarma runs alongside it, leaner and more direct in its seasoning.
The family platters are the move for two or more people. customers consistently note that the platters are genuinely sized for sharing — what feeds two adults and a child at the table still sends them home with lunch the next day. The meat arrives on a bed of saffron-scented rice with grilled vegetables and a basket of fresh tandoori bread baked in-house. The bread alone is worth the drive. It comes out of the oven puffed and slightly charred at the edges, made for tearing and dragging through whatever is in front of you.
The menu also runs shish tawook — marinated chicken cubes grilled on skewers — and Iraqi kebab, which differs from the beef kebab in its spicing: more allspice and a touch of cinnamon in the mix, which is that Mesopotamian heritage showing up in the seasoning. First-timers tend to gravitate toward the more familiar items. By the second visit they’re ordering the Iraqi kebab and wondering why you waited.
The room is unpretentious and comfortable. Service is friendly and fast. The neighborhood around it on North Greenville is worth exploring — Al Baghdady Bakery and Cafe is steps away, and the concentration of Middle Eastern grocers, bakeries, and restaurants in this corridor makes it one of the more culturally rich dining stretches in the northern suburbs.
Salam Grill is at 329 N. Greenville Avenue, Richardson. Open Monday through Thursday and Sunday noon to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 11 p.m. Phone: (972) 238-9200. DoorDash and online ordering available.
