Cuisines hit cities in waves. Seattle saw neighborhood Italian joints surge in the ‘80s, farm-to-table restaurants just after the New Millennium, Asian mom and pops—particularly Korean—in recent years.

Ready for the Next Big Thing? Middle Eastern.

Seattle’s had spotty representation for awhile—treasures like Phoenecia Restaurant on Alki—but didn’t start seeing a swell until the latter part of the teens, mostly in neighborhoody falafel shops like Zaina in Pioneer Square, Aladdin Falafel Corner on the Ave, Mr. Gyros Greenwood and Ballard, and Mawadda Café in the Rainier Valley.

A tipping point approached. High-end restaurateurs who’d made their names on Northwest cuisine, like Matt Dillon at Sitka and Spruce began to slip Middle Eastern flavors like harissa and muhammara into their dishes. A mobile food truck in Fremont Georgetown, Hallava Falafel, achieved cultlike status. An award-winning restaurateur, Maria Hines of Tilth, devoted her new Golden Beetle in Ballard to the extraordinary cuisines of the Eastern Mediterranean. Another award-winner, MistralKitchen, established the Monday-night pop up Arabesque, in which one of its chefs takes on a different Arab region every four weeks.

An explosion was born.

Cafe Munir, a neighborhood Lebanese restaurant in Crown Hill, opened earlier this year. A few weeks ago saw the opening of Med Mix at the corner of 23rd and Union, a troubled spot whose good early notices on its gyros are raising the neighborhood’s hopes that this time they’ve got a keeper.

And two high-profile Middle Eastern places are on the horizon, to launch in the fall at the earliest: Mamnoon, a high-end looker across from Melrose Market; and a project from none other than trend-spotter Tom Douglas, who floated the idea recently on his radio show that it would be great to have a falafel house next to the Paramount Theater.

Why yes it would, Tom.