Occasionally, they do have specials like fasoulia, a delicate bean stew they serve on Sundays, but for the most part, the kitchen serves entrees that run to kababs or shawarma, sliced marinated meats finished in a sauté pan, as opposed to being cloven from a rotating spit the way it is normally done in countries from Greece to Afghanistan.
This is a pretty place with a contempo design: black-topped tables, cream-colored chairs and a partially open kitchen. The lighting is soft and chic, and the servers, mostly attractive young women clad in basic black, are engaging to the point of being obsequious, and anxious to tell you about Lebanese food.
Perhaps the most famous aspect of this cuisine, a hybrid of nomadic, French and Arabic influences, is mezze, an array of appetizers served in small dishes. Several of them have a large following in this country because they are both light and healthy, although I bet that only a few of us know the dishes are Lebanese. I am referring to hummus, tabbouleh and baba ghannouj, a smooth, smoky, roasted-eggplant dip. You can find these dishes today in Whole Foods Markets, Smith's—they are that mainstream.
Here, though, you get better, and tastier, versions of these dishes. The hummus (pureed garbanzo beans with a touch of tahini, sesame paste and a good olive oil) is uncommonly creamy, for example, delicious on the hot house pita bread, which is, incidentally, terrific. Tabbouleh, or parsley salad mixed with bulgur wheat, tomatoes and lemon juice, is state-of-the-art, far more delicate and flavorful than anything you'll find in the market. In fact, baba ghannouj is, too; you really taste smokiness in it, the result of smoking the eggplant skin-on before pureeing it.
But there are many other mezze to dip your fork into. Labne is a triple-creamy yogurt eaten as more of a condiment than an appetizer, while warak enab is an Arabic name for rice-and-spice-stuffed vine leaves, this version oily but tasty.
Fried kibbe are little torpedoes of bulgur wheat mixed with ground meat, and a filling made of ground meat laced with pine nuts. It's an important dish in the Lebanese cuisine, as it is said that no bride can pass muster with her prospective mother-in-law unless she can prepare this dish with style.
Mannish, or Lebanese pizza, are really oven-baked flatbreads, served piping hot. I like zattar, topped with a thyme and sesame paste and plenty of olive oil; also lahme, a flatbread topped with spiced, ground meat.
If you wish to accompany these flatbreads with a salad, then the fattoush (a biting vinaigrette on salad vegetables tossed with crisped shreds of pita bread) or a fairly traditional, uniformly delicious Greek salad, are the best choices.
When it comes to entrees, though, the choices are, as I indicated, pretty much restricted to kababs or marinated meats. My chicken shawarma, spiced meat finished in a sauté pan, was flaccid and undercooked, even though I asked for the meat crispy, but one of the owners agreed to bring me a lamb kabab in its place, which came to the table exactly the way I requested it.
Kafta kabob is a cylinder of ground beef with a nice charcoal taste; and let us not forget the best deal in the house, the combination kabab, three large skewers of filet, chicken and kafta kabob, enough meat to get you through an entire week.
For dessert, there is a nice homemade baklava, but even better is kuneifi, squares of a butter-crumb pastry filled with sweet cheese, served warm with a rosewater syrup on top. You can also opt for one of those hookahs, flavored tobacco with exotic perfumes. To each their own.