Sometime last week a friend and I decided to meet up for lunch. Luckily for me, this was one of my friends that gets a kick out of picking places I've never been (which I thoroughly enjoy since I'm usually the one that has to amaze others with my impeccable taste in local foodie destinations). She immediately chose Sinbad to which I did a quick background check on *cough*Yelp*cough*. Needless to say it passed my prerequisite qualifications (hey, I like to be an informed consumer).
As soon as we arrived I realized this is the place in the Cinci district that I always tell myself I'm going to try, but never have because it's always closed when I'm in the area. A simple sign above the door, no outdoor seating, no tale-tell signs of what I'd be walking into so I prepared myself for anything.
Okay the inside isn't that great. It's a hole-in-the-wall, what do you expect? It does have a very family feel to it regardless of the service (we'll get to that right after this) that makes you feel right at home. The booths and tables look worn, but I kind of didn't mind. And I will say the booths were quite large, they could easily seat six. You pay at the register on the small counter towards the back left. Really there isn't a whole lot going on inside.
I did feel comfortable in general...again, at home, if you will. But I felt like the ugly stepsister and not the good kind of ugly stepsister where your mom runs sh!t because she married a handsomely rich merchant, the bad kind of ugly stepsister where your dad cares more about the new b-word and her stuck up b-word of a daughter than you and they occasionally forget to feed you. We weren't greeted upon arrival, getting a recommendation was a tad hard, our server rarely checked on us, and we had to ask multiple times for the same thing. It's clearly ran by a family (and maybe their close friends), but they need to do a little customer service training.
I decided to go with the Combo Plate because that had the most variety so I could get the most out of this experience. The great news is the food is on point! The Combo Plate comes with Gyro meat, Shish Tawouk, and Kafta and a side of salad or rice. I opted for the salad since I knew my friend would be getting the rice and I could steal off her plate. The Gyro meat was thick cuts of lamb, pretty standard and since it came with a side of Tzatziki sauce I'm 98.4% sure that their Gyros are thebombdotcom. The Shish Tawouk which is a curried chicken was surprisingly my favorite. The smaller chunks of chicken dipped in the spicy avocado mix (I don't want to call it guacamole because it's definitely not that) was really good. The Kafta was actually best with the Tzatziki and a bit of the yellow rice I kept stealing. It's a ground meat fried and I found that if you just order the Kafta, it also comes with pan-fried tomatoes on top (so yum).
After waiting a good 20 minutes for our check, we were finally leaving and my friend decided to grab some Baklava. It could've been a lot more crisp on top, but I liked the flavors and after looking at a few pictures on their Facebook, I'm definitely going to be trying their Warbat (think Baklava minus the nuts, plus cream cheese). read more