Image: Courtesy Experience Olympia
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By Allison Williams October 16, 2025
When siblings Lisa and Jacob David opened a food truck in
downtown Olympia in 2011, they had one problem: The local health
department, which needed to approve their operation, had no code for
traditional shawarma. No one in Thurston County had asked for the process to be
certified before, they recall.
Jacob David, raised with his sister in Toledo, Ohio, called in some
Midwest backup. He contacted the health department in Dearborn, Michigan—home
to a lot of Middle Eastern cuisine. “I asked them what the rules and
policies are, and I took all the notes, and I helped the [Thurston County]
health department basically write their rules,” he says.
The food truck, called Nineveh Assyrian, was an instant hit, busy from
day one in its parking spot next to a long-running taco truck, about a block
from Olympia City Hall. Besides the slow-roasted meats, they dished falafel and
hand-cut fries dusted in za’atar. It was good food for takeout, and did
especially well during the pandemic 10 years later.
The Davids knew that Olympia needed shawarma; when Lisa came to Olympia
to study at Evergreen State College she was taken aback by the lack of Middle
Eastern food. “My first visit here was in ’98 and I saw it myself; it was
culture shock,” remembers Jacob. “Maybe lack-of-culture shock.”
But the Nineveh food truck, which last year expanded into a full
restaurant, is rare in both Olympia and the entire US. It focuses not on
general Middle Eastern cuisine, but specifically Assyrian food. Does the name
not ring a bell? Dig deep into long-forgotten social studies knowledge.
Assyrians are, as Jacob describes, “ancient indigenous Mesopotamians
from northern Iraq, western Iran, southern Turkey, and eastern Syria.” The
siblings are Assyrian on their father’s side, with family roots in Iraq and
Iran. As Lisa puts it, “It’s an extremely tiny population with, like, an almost
dead language,” largely driven out of their homeland due to modern conflicts.
But the world’s oldest cookbooks were from Mesopotamia—4,000-year-old tablets
held at Yale University describe lamb and other stews.
As the creative chef in their sibling partnership, Lisa got to expand
their menu when the brick-and-mortar restaurant opened last year. That meant
soups like bushala (yogurt-based) and chipteh (a rich meatball soup). Persian
influence to the cuisine means tastes of saffron and pomegranate molasses.
Jacob went to Iraq to learn how to make traditional barley bread in a tannur,
or clay oven, then adapted it to be cooked on a steel dome saj in the
restaurant.
Though the Assyrian Empire may have faded a long time ago—Nineveh is
named for the ancient capital city that fell in 612 BC—the restaurant’s flavors
have broad geographic roots. Amba, a fermented, pickled mango that Lisa uses
for sauces, was an Indian staple brought to Baghdad by Iraqi Jews. It’s a
popular side for falafel today in both Iraq and Israel, says Lisa, but “you’re
not gonna find it in other countries.”
Today the Davids’ extended family has left Iraq, but their relatives’
faces illuminate one of Nineveh Assyrian’s walls in framed photos, all in black
and white with gold gilt frames. The restaurant interior pops with bright teal
vintage chairs. Lisa, who studied ceramics at Evergreen, made the lighting, and
screens use a fish scale pattern from an ancient Assyrian palace.
When Lisa first dreamed of an Olympia restaurant in the 1990s, she just
wanted to get good falafel without having to drive to Seattle. Now she and
Jacob see huge interest from locals, often selling out whenever they experiment
with new specials. The food truck still draws lines, and on a recent weeknight
I saw Nineveh the restaurant fill to capacity by 6pm, chatter bouncing off the
teal walls in the space’s rear bar.
“It’s really great to see people’s palates expanding,” says Jacob.
Nineveh
Assyrian
728 4th Ave E, Olympia (food truck); 113 Capitol Way N, Olympia
(restaurant)
Travel Time from Seattle: 1 hour
Lisa David co-owns the restaurant with her brother, Jacob. Image: Courtesy Experience Olympia
Image: Courtesy Experience Olympia
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