I Love Bread Baskets
18 Jan
Since Ali has always been pretty indifferent (read: indecisive) about where he eats, I am usually the one to choose the restaurants we visit. Anyone who knows Ali knows that he isn’t shy about asking for a meal with 50 modifications. I wish I could say I was the perfect customer but of course I have my own issues too. Waiters often hate us. Managers often hate us. Most of the time I can’t really blame them. In order to minimize meal disasters, my strategy has always been to choose restaurants based on the quality of their bread basket. Ali and I love love love bread and if it’s good it can usually make up for dismal food.
Our favorite bread in Los Angeles?
1. Il Fornaio
2. Fogo de Chao
3. Grand Lux Cafe
As you probably already know, I found out last year that I am wheat/gluten intolerant. (How ironic is it that I can no longer eat my favorite food in the world?) Since then I’ve had to come up with a different criteria for my restaurant selections. Truthfully, I would rather eat at home because attempting to deal with both my allergies and Ali’s demands is just a bit more than I can handle. But if we ate at home seven days a week then our social life would be very sad instead of just pathetic. So my solution is to find ethnic restaurants that don’t revolve around wheat.
We were feeling pretty adventurous and decided to visit Sunnin Lebanese Cafe. Being that this restaurant is new to us we weren’t sure about wait times and so we attempted to make a reservation. When we called, however, Sunnin told said that “for our convenience” they don’t take reservations. Not sure how that is convenient for us but we decided to put our name on the call ahead list and hope for the best. When we reached the restaurant 15 minutes later we were told to wait off to the side until they called us. We were confused because there were several empty tables and no other people waiting but by some miracle we managed to keep our mouths shut for a change.
I wasn’t happy about it though.
Ten minutes later we were still waiting, even though parties that came in after us were seated ahead of us. I guess the no reservation concept only applied to certain people?
While we waited I took a few pictures of the interior.
It is pretty nice and more importantly, very clean.
We were finally seated and ordered the Fried Cauliflower appetizer. I wasn’t really feeling it but the Falafel had bread crumbs in it so there weren’t a whole lot of other options for me.
This was pretty terrible. Greasy and tasteless. I had one bite and that was more than enough.
I also ordered the Lebanese salad ( lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers in a vinaigrette) and the Eggplant Delight (grilled eggplant with tomatoes, diced onions, parsley and EVOO) .
I had a few bites of each but neither of impressed me. All I could taste was oil.
Ali and Maya had the Combo Grill (1 skewer of each, beef kebab, chicken kebab, and kefta kebab, served with hommos, rice, Lebanese salad and pita bread).
Sorry for the blurry picture but apparently I will always be camera challenged.
Ali was happy with his food at least. And he had NO modifications!
I ate almost all Ali’s hummus (or hommos ?) and I am happy to say that it was really good. I still left hungry but what else is new?
Final thoughts on Sunnin - if you eat meat it’s a great place to go. If you are vegetarian, don’t like greasy food, and have a million allergies, I recommend you eat at home.
I really need to follow my own advice.
