The Noho branch of Café Lebanon is located, slightly off the beaten Main Street path, at 2 Conz Street. It's certainly walkable from the main drag, but we fear that Lebanon will not get the same foot traffic as, say, Amanouz Café, which serves Mediterranean fare (as opposed to Lebanon's strictly Middle Eastern menu) and is located directly on Main Street. And that would be a shame because there was so much we liked about Café Lebanon. Yet, in the final analysis, there were just as many things that were oh so close, but not quite stellar.
The restaurant is large, airy and attractive, with "exotic-looking" blood-red walls and tastefully subdued lighting. We also appreciated the elegant and unusual dishware, always a good indication of the restaurant's attention to detail. The service was also impressive; the waitress never hovered, but was there when we were ready to place our order and when we finished our appetizer. She even spoke knowledgeably about the pedigree of the construction paper-thin pita bread (Canadian, as it turns out). Accompanied by zaatar-a combination of sesame seeds, thyme, olive oil and sumac (Sarah liked it; Nick didn't)-the pita tasted good enough to have been homemade.
Next came Nick's heaping fattoush salad, which was almost grainy for the abundance of diced mint and parsley. It was fresh and delicious, odd texture notwithstanding. Sarah's lentil soup had the consistency of a thin split pea soup, and a similar comforting but bland flavor. A choice of either of these two items came with Nick's Byblos platter ($17) and Sarah's kafta kabob ($14). Nick's dish included sambosik, kibbie krass, hummos, baba ghannouj, taboulie and rice pilaf …
Now comes the part in which we tell you what all that means. The sambosik was in fact closer to an empanada than to an Indian samosa. And we like empanadas. In retrospect, we would have enjoyed them-and the delectable yogurt dipping sauce-as an appetizer (four for $6). The kibbie krass was less successful: it's hard to go wrong with a deep fryer, but when your shell is soooo much thicker than the meat inside, it's difficult to enjoy that meat. We didn't love the mint seasoning either.
The hummos (their spelling, not ours) was like the guacamole at Valentine: creamy, but without chunks or texture. And unlike Val's jalapeño-infused guac, the hummos lacked the requisite kick (this is not an endorsement of Val's guac, mind you). The baba ghannouj was much better, although it too could stand a good spicing. The minty, lemony taboulie, meanwhile, didn't appeal to either of our sensibilities but seemed like a strong representation of the dish. Both Nick's and Sarah's dinners included rice pilaf, which, though far better than Uncle Ben's version, was a tad dry. We stuck to the pita for our carb fix and were well into our second basket when we ran out of baba.
Sarah's kafta kabob was actually four patties of spiced ground meat-they sort of tasted like small, well-seasoned hamburger patties. They were very moist but were cooked all the way through (no need to specify medium rare here) and came with a mayonnaise-like sauce. Based on his experience eating kafta in Istanbul restaurants without menus (or prices, for that matter), Nick was expecting the kafta to be a lot spicier, but Café Lebanon's version grew on him. Sarah enjoyed her kafta but had she wanted a hamburger, she'd have gone to Fatzo's.
These gripes, relatively speaking, are minor ones. If we return to Café Lebanon (and we most probably will, seeing as how there's really no competition nearby), we'll request that our dishes come caliente-and when we get a quizzical look, we'll ask for them to be spicy.