Lebanese Flower & Bakery and The Beriut Roaster

So the day was relatively uneventful. Apparently, the lack of sleep caught up with me and I slept until 12:30pm, almost 12 hours. So I missed breakfast and ordered room service...not that great. I spent the afternoon at the pool. Considering I am in the desert, the pool is surprisingly cool and I didn't even get burnt and doesn't look like I was even out there unless you could have seen my "pruney" fingers :-)

So for dinner, Shon, Christine, Nicole, baby Ethan and I ventured out to the Lebanese Flower. People have raved about how wonderful it is and it is mentioned in almost every blog I read when doing research to come here. I can now say I have been there and was not impressed. While everything was gorgeous, it was just not all that. I had the grilled chicken and it was a little too blackened for me. Really just tasted like any chicken you would put on the grill. No extra flavor. I tasted Nicole's lamb and it was pretty good. Far better than the lamb I had whe I was in Greece. After waiting for what seemed like FOREVER for the "bill", we went to the Lebanese Bakery (a different building). It smelled wonderful. They were out of chocolate eclairs but Nicole got 1/2 kilo of some random selection of chocolatey stuff. Some was good, some tooooooo rich!!! 

Now off to the Beriut Roaster. It smelled of coffee, curry and sweets. And guess what...they had all of that. Most was sitting in what looked to be burlap sacks and you would just get what you want and put in a plastic bag to be weighed. Quite interesting.

Below are pictures from dinner at the Lebanese Flower. I will try to explain what things are but we don't really know the correct names for stuff.

This was brought to the table first. It had a sliced tomato, lemon, peppers, black & green olives with pitts, red onion, cucumber and some type of lettuce. Also brought to the table was fresh, warm pita bread. The pita bread was the best part of the meal...INCREDIBLE!!! The lettuce was spicy and the black olives were more bitter than I like. The tomato was good.

Then came the hummus. YUMMY!!!!! That's all I have to say about that.

Then this salad came. Not really sure what was on it but it had some kind of dressing and baked pita chips in it. It was the closet thing to a salad I have had since I got here.

This was Shon's meal. That is falafel. It is roasted chickpeas that have been fried. It tasted better than it sounds. I had never had it before.

Haven't seen this in many years. This Diet Coke can has the pop tab from the '80s. All soda cans are this way.

Here is my dinner, grilled chicken. It was ok. The fries were cold and the chicken was took blackened for my taste. However, the pita on top was not warm and was YUMMY!!!!

This is Nicole's Lebanese Flower Grill. Basically, lamb and chicken with some kind of pita on top. She said the one on the top left was good but the one on the right not so much. This is the lamb I tasted that was really good.

And here is her Coke Zero written in Arabic.

Lastly, they brought us some "dessert". We are unsure of what it is. There were actually 4 brought (I forgot to take a picture). Three had some kind of cheese in them and the other one had some kind of fig/date/nut combo in it. It was cold and seemed to be soaked in a syrup. It was too much like a pancake for me and I don't care for pancakes.

Now, this was bought at the Beriut Roaster. We all thought it was interesting. And most of you know that I am an EXTREMELY picky eater. I decided to try this. I convinced Nicole that if she would eat half, I would too. So, I bite it and give her the other half. It was interesting. I kept eating. She finally eats it and has to spit it out. I don't really know how to explain it except that it is some kind of fruit and nut "nougat" that is rolled in crushed mini roses. We saw the mini roses at another store to buy but couldn't figure out what they were for. I guess you roll candy in it. Anyway, it tastes like red roses smell. Will I ask for more? NO WAY!!!! But I can say I tried it.

Hope you all got a good laugh out of this because we sure did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!