I always knew this place was legit, but just never made it out here until recently. The thing that actually tipped the scales was reading a post by Christian Felix raving about the Kunefah. I don't really follow the food scene at a personal level, but accidentally became a huge fan of his.
On the first trip, we were just looking for lunch. We just needed to supplement the leftovers we had at home, so we grabbed a Philly Cheesesteak and tried the Kunefah. In recent years we've learned to trust Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurants with cheesesteaks. They're already in the business of slinging quality, tender, well seasoned meat, so you're already well above the ground floor of frozen boxed philly meat. Here, we got exactly what we signed up for. Not really top tier, but way further from bottom tier with the thinly shaved, tender meat and the wicked soft bread. It ate like a normal sub, but one you'd go out of your way to get.
The Kunefah was also the brand new and unique experience we had signed up for. Kind of hard to explain the experience, but imagine a wet but somewhat bready pastry version of baklava. Oh yeah, but there's cheese! And not just a cream cheese filling like in a cheese danish, but real, stretchy, cheesy cheese. Also, this was a great reminder that way more things need to come with rose water.
We were passing by a few weeks later and figured we'd go for some full on food this time around. We went right down the center lane and ordered two combo platters. For the first time ever, we didn't order a side of pitas, and then we regretted it when nothing came with them. We also ordered a few side sauces just to see what was what, and seriously regretted not ordering a bucket of the house hot sauce. The white sauce and medi sauce were just normal - something to moisten up those platters any way we can. The hot sauce we tried to use sparingly because it took the whole platter by the reigns with just a small dab. I'm not kidding, I think I'd order at least four just for my next platter. It's reasonably spicy and tastes exactly the way it looks. Not too sweet or acidic, just a blast of spot on smashed pepper taste. The platters themselves were pretty standard bowl/platter fare, but 10/10.
We labored over some sort of additional side to get, and ended up getting meat arrayes. These were only seen on the website menu, and we almost missed them looking through the Google/Grub Hub menus. They kind of reminded me of pides, and I think we liked them more since we didn't have a lot of pitas for the platters. Using them as pitas felt like a waste, but they weren't quite ready to solo either. I definitely think we should have gotten cheese, because I feel like it would have gone further than the minced meat did.
Oh, and speaking of brand new experiences. I figured I'd throw in an Arabic Coffee, with absolutely no idea what that meant. I love all things coffee, and I absolutely love Greek/Turkish coffee, so this was exciting. When we came back to the car, I realized I never got the coffee, so I went back in. Turns out it was in there, just in the 2-3 oz dipping cup I assumed was one of the sauces. I opened it up, and it's thick, like viscous thick. I love thick coffee, and up to this point, I still wasn't shook. Not until I smelled it. I'm pretty sure my girlfriend got a contact high just from sitting next to me. I'm sure there's a dozen tastes I don't have the wherewithal to identify, but front and center is freight train of clove. Hard, potent clove. Holy crap. There's also kind of a coffee taste in there too I think. It felt more like I was dosing when I sipped, or drank, or ate this stuff. I nursed it for a good ten minutes on the drive home, bracing myself for each sip until eventually it was just sludge. I didn't hate it, but if there's a specific way you're supposed to do this I definitely didn't do it that way. Super glad I tried it, but no reason for me to do that again.
There's still a dozen things I need to try here, and I have high expectations for all of them. This place is clearly the real deal, and I wish I didn't wait so long before coming here for the first time. read more