On our second night in Paris we ate at a Lebanese restaurant. You could see it was a family owed and operated business by the way the mai-tre d' informally mingled with the guests, had his sons double up as servers and of course spoke aloud to the head chef each time he made an appearance. It was great! Authentic for sure.
Many restaurants have a fixed dinner menu where for about 25 Euros you get your drink, appetizer, entree and dessert. We noticed this in a couple of different places. I had a drink called Kir which apparently was supposed to be a traditional blackcurrant wine and SK chose the Arak, another middle-eastern speciality with vodka and aniseed. The flavors were too pungent and the drinks a little too heady. The appetizer turned out to be a sampler of 6 different items from hummus to Lebanese kebob and baba ghanoush (image above). For the entree I had the lamb chops and SK the chicken (but naturally!). Dessert was of course Baklava (no Mediterranean meal is complete without it) and a Lebanese speciality called Ousmalieh. I will save the details of this very sinful dessert for my next post.
