The inside is decorated with a hodge-podge of Kurdish artifacts and pictures. The ceilings are really tall, so they’ve maximized wall space by stacking all kinds of things on top of each other. It’s not gaudy or tacky, just a little busy and interesting to look at. The servers were pretty helpful, but all business – no joking around or friendly smiles.The menu doesn’t have a ton of things on it, but honestly, everything on it looks delicious. The lunch menu is a little smaller than the dinner menu, but they share a lot of items. There are 3 appetizers, a couple soups and salads, and a handful of entrees. Despite the small-ish menu, it was actually quite tough deciding what to eat here. We got an appetizer of Nareen to start and then D.Rough got the Dowjic soup and I went with the Kubay Sawar. D.Rough also got a Kurdish coffee and I got a Kurdish Lemonade.
Again, my glass dominates D.Rough’s glass – this is becoming a pattern. The coffee was super black, but not motor oil thick like Turkish Coffee. D.Rough said it was seriously strong coffee, but she did like it. That’s about all I know. The lemonade was not at all what I expected. It looked like rusty water. Fortunately, it tasted better than it looked. I’m sure this is just how lemonade is served there, but it was still a little odd to put it to my lips. It tasted odd as well, but not bad-odd. Just regular-odd. It was lemony, and refreshing, but still had some sorts of spices or something in it that were indecipherable – kind of like mulled wine or something. It didn’t take me much to finish the glass, so it wasn’t bad at all.
The Nareen came out and looked fantastic. It is basically feta cheese bread with a spicy red dipping sauce. Still not sure what the spicy dipping sauce was, but it definitely didn’t go to waste! It was really thick bread and the cheese on it wasn’t overpowering like some feta. It wasn’t light or anything, but was really tasty. And it’s shaped like pizza slices, so it’s super fun to eat! I don’t think I’ve ever had feta cheese bread, but I would definitely order this if I saw it on a menu somewhere.
D.Rough’s Dowjic soup was a little weird. It was very lemon-y. Like really lemon-y. It has chicken, yogurt, rice, basil, and lemon juice in it. The menu says it’s tangy and it is probably an understatement. I don’t think it was the tang that D.Rough had an issue with. It was more that everything tasted the same. She said, “It’s a big bowl of one note.” It’s true. It’s a huge bowl of soup and each bite tastes the same as the last. It got kind of monotonous. It might have been better as a small appetizer bowl of soup, rather than an entrée bowl of soup. I actually finished her soup since I liked it much more than she did. We traded plates/bowls about halfway through.
My meal was actually much better than the soup. The Kubay Sawar is crushed wheat made into dough and then filled with ground beef, spices, and onion and then sautéed in olive oil. Apparently, this is a famous dish in Nineveh (home of Jonah and the whale), so how could I NOT order this. The lightly fried dough balls were good, but seemed slightly bland upon taking the first bite or two. Then I combined them with the yellow lentil pool of awesome that it was served with and it became amazing. There was a hilarious rice-dam separating the lentil soup from the dough balls that maintained its structural integrity through most of the meal. But eventually the delicious rice-dam was consumed. The salad on the side was a pretty simple salad with a light vinaigrette, so not much to report there. The dough balls were the stars of this show.We would definitely eat here again. The food decisions might be different next time, but I think what we had was a good representation of what they have to offer. Maybe the dinner menu will offer us some sort of new options, but I think there are plenty of items on the menu at lunch to give your taste buds what they’re looking for (or pleasantly surprise them). It's difficult to describe, but the cuisine is almost a combination of Greek and Indian food, as far as the spices and flavors go. I'm not sure if that helps or not, but it's about as close as I can get to a description of what to expect.
Top 5 things about Babani’s
1. Kubay Sawar
2. Nareen
3. Good descriptions (in English) on the menu
4. Hilarious story of the sexual prowess of Kurdish men
5. Taste of the Kurdish lemonade
Bottom 5 things
1. One-flavor soup
2. Color of the lemonade
3. It’s not anywhere near where I work… not even close…
4. It fills up pretty fast during lunch (and they close a couple hours before dinner – be careful of your timing)
5. There’s not a cheese curd in sight. You’d think with it being a Kurdish restaurant…
www.babanis.com
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