De Damas à Baghdad

One of the restaurants in our area that caught our eye was this Syrian and Iraqi place. We decided to check it out tonight. I love that nearly all the restaurants in our area allow you to bring your own wine; it makes me more likely to tip because I haven't wasted a bunch of money on drinks. The special was a Lamb Shank with taboulleh, but since I've already had a variation of lamb with mint this year, I skipped one of my favorite meals in favor of something else. An entire section of their menu was unavailable tonight, so the waiter really talked up the lamb, too. It even came with fresh mint tea! Argh.

Aside from the entrees, there is also a choice of 1, 3 or 5 small dishes from a selection of options. Shannon and I both went with 3; I ordered the lamb tongues, stuffed zucchini and fava beans and Shannon ordered this unripened cheese, Hummus and zucchini chips with a pomegranate vinaigrette. I'd never eaten tongue before, but it tasted very much like lamb meat. The texture is very much like what I'd picture eating a tongue to be like; smooth and tender. The idea of eating tongue, coupled with visible taste buds on the meat itself, turned Shannon off of trying it. I ordered the stuffed zucchini because they were also called dolmades and I've never heard anything but what I expect dolmades to be (stuffed grape leaves) called that before. I expected rice and lamb with lots of mint stuffed into a zucchini. They stuffed the zucchini very well, but it was not very flavorful and cold. The fava beans looked like they had been poured directly from a can and mixed with onion and parsley, but were still somehow good despite this.

Shannon's hummus was extremely oily, but this gave it an incredibly smooth texture. Aside from the oil and chickpeas, the flavor was nothing unlike hummus I've had before. There was a lot of tahini flavor and I think it was garnished with paprika. No real taste of lemon or garlic, but it was still good. The cheese was very much like yogurt and extremely tart and lemony. The zucchini chips were nothing like we expected, more like sun-dried tomatoes than any sort of chip. I thought that they were very overwhelming in flavor, but Shannon liked them because she loves pomegranates.