Our last night in Haifa was not as much of a success as the previous night.
We headed to a middle eastern restaurant that is well-known locally but we kind
of ended up describing it as more of a tourist spot with a lot of local young
trendy people.
When we arrived at Fattoush they escorted us directly to an outside table
without even asking us if we wanted to sit inside. It was a pleasant evening so
I said okay but then realized my mistake when people started to smoke near us.
Luckily that did not last very long and we really didn't have too much of an
issue with it. We looked at the menu and ordered some drinks. Samuel got used to
the response "no Coke, Pepsi"which always made me giggle from Saturday Night
Live. There were actually only two Israeli wines, and maybe a half dozen others,
on the menu both from Recanati and one was a white called Yasmin which was a
nice Chardonnay and sauvignon blanc blend the other was a Cabernet Sauvignon red
which I also had a glass of later on when will decided to order a beer.
Our server came over and gave us a completely clueless look as to what was
going on. She seemed nice enough but got very confused trying to open the wine
and broke the Cork and then completely tried to pull the cork out sideways. My
first impression was that she had more piercings than brains, but that would be
a rude thing to say. Her name was Aden and I understood that to mean Eden or
Heaven in Arabic which was pretty cool but seriously this must have been her
first night.
Will and I decided to split two appetizers one was a mixed Middle Eastern
dish of Kubbe, meat filled fried torpedoes, Sfiha, a pastry with some minced
meat on top and cheese fingers with tahini dip. While these were nice they would
not win a prize, and the second appetizer of Ajami was fried cauliflower on
eggplant with garlic tahini and Chili's that was served cold but tasted
fabulous.
Samuel ordered a plain bowl of hummus with chickpeas which probably had at
least a cup and a half of humus in it and clearly could be eaten by at least 5
or 6 people.
A small plate of vegetables and pickles arrived and Samuel decided he was
very full and wanted only some more so they brought another plate which was
about 10 times the size for him as a main course. He ended up eating 1/5th
maybe.
Will and I decided to split the Fattoush Kebab which was a beef kabob with
parsley onion vegetables arugula and Tahini and tomato sauce which didn't really
win any prizes but was nice once we stuffed it into some pita with some hummus
and tahina.
When our server arrived with Will's beer it was the wrong type and decided
to make it up to us by bringing out some extra nuts however she spilled those
all over the table; it was so embarrassing.
The out door setting was nice with funky furniture in trees with faces and
lanterns and upside down chairs, but we had had enough got up paid the bill
which seemed to take 30 minutes and headed back to our hotel not too
thrilled.
