Taming persnickety phyllo dough is the bane of many home cooks, but Zaytinya chef Abdel Hashhoush makes it look so easy.

“Yes, brothers and sisters, yes?” Hashhoush asked the enthusiastic crowd several times while rolling out and flipping 24 gigantic paper-thin sheets of phyllo separated by tons of cornstarch — the secret to keeping it unstuck — on a rickety folding table at the Penn Quarter FRESHFARM market on Thursday night.

His able “assistants,” Zaytinya head chef Jorge Chicas and Café Atlántico head chef and soon-to-be-blogger Katsuya “Kats” Fukushima, helped keep the jokes flowing and the cornstarch flying, right onto the chic dark brown skirt of this DCist and other unsuspecting observers in the front row.