Laffa & Co: Bread Born in a Tandoor, Filled with Fire

A laffa fresh from a tandoor has a blistered surface, a soft center and a smell of toasted flour. At Laffa & Co, that bread is the point of the whole menu. The restaurant occupies Unit 07 at 1736 NE Miami Gardens Drive in North Miami Beach, and it bakes each laffa to order in a tandoori oven, then fills it with shawarma, kebab, fire roasted chicken, schnitzel or slow cooked pulled beef. The tagline on its website reads Middle Eastern street food, reimagined. The idea is simple and well chosen: take the Israeli sandwich that depends on its bread, and make the bread fresh for every order instead of reheating it from a stack.

Laffa is a large, flexible flatbread, thicker than a wrap and softer than a pita, and its quality shows in how it behaves under a heavy filling. Baked in a tandoor, it picks up the quick, intense heat that gives the surface char marks and leaves the interior pliable. That matters for a sandwich that carries sauce, salad and hot meat, because a tired flatbread tears and a fresh one holds. The kitchen sells the bread in two formats. The closed laffa wraps the filling like a sandwich, while the open laffa arrives as a platform for toppings, closer to a flatbread plate that a table can tear apart together.