We were able to walk in around 8 pm without a problem. The restaurant seems to be more popular with the older residents of Murray Hill, so the dinner rush was wrapping up by then.

CT & I were both pretty hungry so we started with two appetizers.

Ezme Salad. A mixture of minced tomatoes, hot spices, garlic, onions, olive oil and lemon juice. This could best be described as the Turkish version of traditional Italian bruschetta. There was a good level of spice that brought some nice warmth against the coolness of the veg.

CT says: This was a great start to the dinner. It had a lot of spice and flavor, without feeling heavy or filling me up. I’m a huge fan of tomatoes in almost every presentation, save bloody marys, so I was very satisfied with this dish. Even though it had an olive on top – yuck.

Of course, the famous Ali Baba bread was a perfect utensil for picking up some of the Ezme.

I also decided to try the Kalamar Izgara (Grilled Calamari). Tender pieces of calamari char grilled and seasoned with garlic, tarragon, and parsley. This was quite a large portion of calamari. Unfortunately, it was cooked more to the chewy side. The tarragon took over as the predominant flavor which made it seem as if the calamari was sprinkled with cinnamon. The dipping sauce seemed to be mayo-based, but wasn’t really necessary.

CT says: I didn’t really like this very dish very much. I don’t know if it was the tarragon (I haven’t had many tarragon-based dishes), but I didn’t like the flavor that coated my mouth. I ate a few pieces with the mayo-sauce but eventually gave up.

CT decided to try one of the Pides, which are basically Turkish flatbreads. Based on the waiter’s recommendation, she had the Kusbasili Pide. Tender baby pieces of lamb with vegetables and seasonings. The lamb was chopped into little cubes and when mixed with the spices it was very similar to a sausage pizza, but better. The crust was very flavorful. It also reheats very well the next day.

CT says: I was very happy with my choice. While I was expecting something completely different, even though TT told me it would be like a flatbread, I happily gobbled it up. The lamb was nicely spiced and even though it was chopped pretty finely, I could still taste the lamb-flavor. There were some finely chopped veggies too, but barely noticeable – just enough to make me feel healthy that I had some in my dish. The crust was slightly crunchy on the edge, however the middle didn’t quite hold up to the toppings. Still I would happily eat this dish again and will be going back to try some of the others.

Some blurry upskirt action for you.

I decided to order something different this time around. Special Spicy Beyti. The Beyti kebab wrapped in a lavash bread served with our special sauce. Beyti is ground lamb with spices. This was like a kebab wrapped in a tortilla covered in white and red sauce. The red sauce had a little bit of heat to it which was nice. It was quite a large serving, so towards the end I just ended up eating the meat. The black thing on the left side was a grilled pepper. There was also a grilled tomato. The lamb was quite tasty with its great “just off the grill” flavor. I never ate much lamb when I was growing but now know that I was really missing it.

Check out the innards of the wrap.

All in all, Ali Baba is a great place for an informal lunch/dinner or for delivery. Although prices have gone up over the past seven year that I have been a customer, the quality of the food has remained high. This is not an easy feat in such a highly competitive environment, like that of NYC. Next time you are in the mood for a kebab, be sure to check out Ali Baba.

© TT for The Feisty Foodie, 2011. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

After being seated, we were giving a basket of their great homemade Turkish bread. They always do a good job with it, making it have the right amount of burntness.

I ordered 2 appetizers for the table.

Hummus. They did a really good job with it. Super smooth and perfect with the bread.

I haven’t gotten the octopus salad appetizer in a long time, so I wanted to get it again. It was a very simple presentation with sliced peppers, onion, olive oil and lemon juice. A very fresh salad that was nice on a hot day.

CT got the Spicy Beyti Kebab for her entree. It is ground lamb flavored with garlic, hot peppers, parsley and grilled on skewers. I had a couple bites and it was very good with just the right amount of spice.

Mom got the Lahana Dolmasi (Stuffed Cabbage) cabbage leaves stuffed with ground lamb, rice, fresh dill and seasonings. Although the flavors were different than she was used to, she said it reminded her of the stuffed cabbage her mother used to make. I had a bite and it was also good, but not something I would order.

Dad got the Karides Guvec (Shrimp Casserole) a casserole of baked shrimps, mushrooms, vegetables, topped with kashar cheese and chef’s sauce and served with rice. He liked this a lot since he gobbled up the whole thing.

I got something different this time around, the Karides Sis (Shrimp Shish) char-grilled shrimps in our chef’s delightfully light sauce and served with mixed green salad. This was very tasty. Two shrimp kabobs with grilled peppers and grilled lemon. The shrimp was cooked perfectly, which is not easy when it is grilled.

Overall, it was a great meal with great service. I remember last time I was there the service wasn’t good. I am happy that they have kept up the quality of their dishes over the years, which is not easy in NYC. It was nice of my parents to take me and CT out for dinner and I think they really enjoyed their food.

© TT for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: TT

Once more following Daniel/Downtown Lunch around… it’s been an interesting couple of weeks with the lack of bento and the excess eating out, so I’ve been able to try a lot more of these places.  Anyway, The Country Kebab – I’m constantly looking for good kofte like I had in Turkey.  Or at least something delicious, whatever!  I’m game! 

Here’s the menu from outside the place.  I opted to get the lamb kebab platter.  They freshly cook it while you wait, so it does take a few minutes, but whatever.  It smelled delicious.  You get to choose your sides, too – he said “pick 3″ so I did.

He probably thought I was weird when I picked brussels sprouts.  They were pickly/vinegary, but tasty.  The broccoli also looked super fresh and tasty (it was vibrant green instead of mushy/soggy looking; I will get that next time).  Hummus was delicious with the hot fluffy pita? they provided, and I also got stuffed grape leaves because I really like those.  Except not these.  They were really mushy and… this may not surprise some people… sweet.  Later on, I looked at the menu and discovered there are raisins in their mix.  I like savory grape leaves, stuffed with rice and seasonings, not rice & raisins.  If you like the sweet kind, these were good – though very soft – but just not my thing. 

And the lamb?  Cooked properly, still juicy, soft and tasty, not gamey, this was pretty good.  It could use a little more salt, but I just dipped it into the provided tzatziki and/or the hummus as I ate, wrapping it in pieces of the fluffy pita and enjoying myself thoroughly.  It was a bit too much food, though I ate it all anyway (oink! oink!)… I was definitely fighting falling asleep when I went back to work.  Yummy. 

Yvo says: Thankfully, its location next door to L&L Hawaiian Barbecue means it’s far enough away that I don’t have to fight temptation every day to eat monster plates of food.  I would definitely go back for more, the offerings are solid enough that I imagine most things there are good.  They had a rotating roster of soup (a couple of people came in while I was eating and a decent number of people went straight for soup, leading me to believe it’s good), and the sandwiches were pretty big too.  Yum… good value and good food should go hand in hand everywhere as they do here.
recommended

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cheap Eats, Lamb

Despite eating more than my fill of kebab in Turkey & Greece, Byblos- a Lebanese restaurant – caught my eye when I saw the many positive reviews on MenuPages.  I was curious to see how good their lamb would be in comparison to Greece/Turkey, though I had a good idea it wouldn’t be as good, perhaps it would come close. 

For those of us who were early/on time/not quite that late, they’d placed on the table some pickled vegetables and some flatbread.  The pita was thin and delightfully chewy, but cold and not that interesting, unfortunately.  We decided to order hummus, as all of us love hummus, but the pita with the hummus was only good and could have been better had the pita been served warm. 

Wisely, someone ordered the falafel, which arrived deep fried goodness alongside a slightly spicy dipping sauce, which reminded me of hot sauce mixed with yogurt.  The falafel was delightfully crispy and yummy.

StB ordered a chopped salad of some kind, which she enjoyed very much.

Two people ordered meat pies or vegetable pies, which looked like the above.  I heard good things about them, but I can’t tell you exactly what…

I ordered the grape leaves (dolmades) with kibbee – “ground lamb with burghul, baked.  I had no idea what to expect; I asked about burghul and was told it was a kind of grain, so I’d thought it might be like a fried rice dish, so I was surprised when it came looking like lasagna, but not.  The waiter had assured me that they were well known for their lamb, and it wasn’t gamey at all, so I dug in eagerly.  The grape leaves were horrendously gamey and after 2, I couldn’t force anymore down.  The kibbee, on the other hand, tasted pleasantly of lamb but not the gamey taste I was dreading.  It was yummy, although after eating half of it, I found the texture a little too dry and crumbly for me, so I began dipping liberally in the hot sauce/yogurt combination provided with the falafel.  That made the texture slightly more bearable. 

I felt bad for SpB, who had ordered just dolmades, but she said she didn’t think they were that bad. 

Yvo says: Overall, not a bad place for authentic Middle Eastern cuisine (Greek, Turkish, Lebanese cuisines all seem somewhat similar though each with their own twist, but the same or similar names).  I would go back, though I found the location a bit annoying- it’s only a few blocks from Grand Central, which means it is completely out of the way for me and not in an area where I could hang out after dinner.  The food was yummy, and the place was fairly empty at night- I’ve a feeling it gets busier during lunch hours or perhaps late night, when the belly dancers arrive and the live music starts- so it’s a solid middle of the road for me.
middle of the road- okay/not bad if you’re in the area

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Lamb kebab with pita, tzatziki

Grilled octopus, with our appetizer of taramasalata in the background

Pork schnitzel

Our first meal in Turkey was soundly disappointing, but we knowingly went into a touristy place.  Ah well.

Our mezze (starter) platter - hummus-ish, horse beans, stuffed eggplant, shredded chicken salad type thing, greens, and I forget what was in the center.  We liked this compilation quite a bit actually.

LanNa’s soup

Salad

LanNa’s fish – no really, there’s a few sea bass chunks in there somewhere.  It had a LOT of bones.

Shirley’s “Turkish” dolmades (stuffed grape leaves)

My handmade pasta with lamb

Best kofte (“meatballs”) in Istanbul, according to a Turkish friend

Salad with yummy beans

Rice pilaf

Kofte!!!  Soft, delicious kofte

Worst meal overall on vacation: in Ciceki Paseji (Flower Passage, literally) in Istanbul, in the Taksim district.  We sat in this crowded hallway like place, with cats roaming up and down (they were cute, actually), and the restaurant owners would insist you look at their menu and get very aggressive.  We randomly chose a place that had people in it, because they all boasted fresh fish, but the prices were outrageous- even more outrageous was that they show you this tray of “fresh” fish (they’re all dead at that point, of course, and just lying on a tray), and when you try to order it, you find out that it’s served whole (head, tail, both on, with bones).  Call us spoiled Americans- but even so, that’s not true; I’ll eat whole fish, steamed, at home, or in restaurants even and not flinch.  Asian restaurants.  Which are much cheaper than what they wanted (it was something like 20YTL per kilo of fish, and you had to buy the whole fish, and the turbot was HUGE- 2+ kg, plus it’s so simply prepared I just didn’t feel it was worth it, and not all of us wanted fish….).

Our mezze- broccoli-ish and horse beans

another mezze- stuffed mussels.  Where are the mussels?…

Salad

LanNa’s shrimp and garlic something or other

Shirley’s kebab something or other

Why all the pictures of one dish?  Because, you see, my friends, this is me eating fried lamb brain.  I swore I’d try it since I saw it on another food blogger’s site describing Greek food, after my friends decided we were going to Greece.  I didn’t see it on any menus in Greece, so instead I tried it in Istanbul.  The verdict?  Don’t eat it with a doctor next to you telling you “Trust me, I’ve dissected enough brains, it tastes like brain.”  Seriously, though, it’s kind of mushy, with no real taste of its own.  I wouldn’t say I disliked it but I don’t see any reason to go out of my way to get it again.  Kind of like how I felt about fugu (blowfish)… people eat it just to say “I ate that.”  Though not sure about the brain, that might be a cultural thing, though it really tastes like nothing to me.

An honest-to-goodness Turkish snack: a “simit”.  Something like a pretzel, but on the inside, at this particular place, fluffy like a croissant though less buttery.  These can be found on every corner being sold from a cart, and in cafes, sometimes cut open to serve a sandwich within.  We got this one- our inaugural simit from Simit Sariya (Simit Palace), and were very pleased, but annoyed the next day when we got one from a cart to discover it was rock hard and cold, much more like a NYC street-pretzel than we’d expected.

Though I didn’t photograph the rest of our meal (very normal, dive place, no big deal, though on the Asia side of Turkey), this was the only dessert we had in Turkey.  A chocolate pudding, essentially, though the top was sprinkled with finely chopped nuts and had a layer congealed on top, the pudding itself was extremely delicious.  We concluded that anything made with milk/dairy in Turkey/Greece (or maybe all of Europe) is better because it’s richer and has no FDA to regulate the pasteurization (if any) and therefore just tastes better.

Our last meal in Turkey was in the Grand Bazaar, at Havuzlu, which is mentioned in many guidebooks and, the proprietor proudly informed us, the New York Times (I bit back telling him exactly what I thought of the NYT and their restaurant reviews).  It was a bit hard to navigate towards, and is in a strange, less traveled portion of the Bazaar, but we found it after much cursing and pushing of other tourists.

Shirley’s “steak”

Kofte – not as good as the first place

I will have more formal reviews for only two places we visited- one in Athens, and one in Istanbul… coming soon.  For now, happy eating!!!

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2007. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Turkey