Abla’s
109 Elgin St, Carlton
03 9347 0006

Shoe Queen loves Lebanese food and the chance to sample a number of Lebanese dishes Ablas have to offer is too hard to pass up, even when she has a 10K run the next day.  If you haven’t heard of Abla and Abla’s by now, it might be because you are not from Melbourne AND haven’t watch Masterchef.  Abla is the matriarch of this restaurant.  Born in 1935, she is still at the restaurant greeting guests these days.  A peek into the kitchen revealed a group of women working to make the banquet we are having tonight- this is truly what you called mum’s home cooking.

On weekdays you would be able to order from the a la carte menu, but on a weekend like tonight, there’s a banquet for approx $55, where you get served a share plates of dips, starters, entrees, mains and dessert.  If this is your first time to Ablas and you can try everything and then next time you can pick and choose the food that you like.

We had some dips to start with, babaganoush, hummus and labne.  The babaganoush had a nice smoky flavour but I thought the hummus needs a bit more garlic and the labne is a little bit too sour.  That being said the Labne is actually quite nice with the “lady fingers” mince lamb filo pastry cigars that was our entree.

Also in the entrees were silverbeet rolls stuffed with rice.  I don’t know about the silverbeet… it tasted a little bit bitter and it was otherwise quite bland. Hubby actually tried to give his to me and I think I refused to eat it, which is rare considering I love those vine leaves wraps and cabbage rolls so I thought I would like this one.

The mince lamb and beef sausages was alright with a nice mixture of spices but it was a little bit dry.

I must say the highlight of the entrees were the broad beans -Everyone liked it.

The next set of entrees were kibbee, falafel, chicken wings and tabbouleh.  I didn’t think the kibbee was that special (>.< Sorry!)- I couldn’t help but compare this with the Chinese Harm Shui Gork you get in Yum Cha, deep fried glutinous rice  ball shaped like a kibbee, with a crunchy chewy texture on the outside and nice succulent meat and mushrooms on the inside.  Kibbee wasn’t like that at all.  It has a crunchy outer layer but the meat was once again a bit dry.

I don’t know why but I am telling you these is a recurring theme here- all the meat we got are very dry.  Do people in Lebanon like dry meat?  But then when I go to Tibas THEIR meat wasn’t dry?

Our falafel here looked like a dirty porn shot (balls with white stuff all over it… sorry…).  It’s not that it’s not great but I would really prefer the sauce to be on the side, so we can decide how much we wanted.

Still the falafel was crispy, which means that they didn’t leave it drowning in the sauce for too long before bringing it out to us, which is good.

The chicken wings were baked for hours.  it must have been HOURS cos it is VERY dry and a bit shrivelled.  I love chicken wings.  They are my favourite part of the chicken and one of my favourite food.  But I really, really didn’t like that chicken wing.

We were getting a little bit bored at this point.  Why are the meat so dry?  Where are all these yummy food that people keep talking about?  The chicken and rice dish arrived, which looked pretty enough, but once again to our frustration the chicken is dry.  Sigh.  I didn’t mind the rice pilaf inside  with the minced lamb mixed with a little bit of almond and cinnamon.  The rice was moist and flavoursome.  But hubby didn’t like this at all.

Needless to say, the grills are dry.  The chicken breast is the worst.  At least while the lamb was overcooked it still retained a tiny bit of juiciness.

Dessert time: Both hubby and I didn’t actually think that we would like the desserts.  We don’t like baklawa and we most certainly don’t like turkish delight.  But, to our surprise we actually loved the desserts.  I think Baklawa is my favourite thing out of the banquet- the pastry was light, yet it tasted so buttery with a subtle, not too sweet hint of honey.  I likey and I still dream about it.  Shoe Queen had the run and refused all her desserts, so I took the initiative to help her out and ate hers too.  Esky gave me a death stare cos he wanted it too.  You Snooze You Lose Dude

The Turkish delight is also surprisingly subtle and awesome.  I hate eating a weird fragrant lump of rose but this is only very very lightly scented.  NOICE.

Coffee time!  I think everyone is a bit scared of the coffee.  It was dark and it looks as if we would bounce off the walls after that.  But I reckon it probably aids digestion.  I was probably right because this coffee has a subtle cardamon seed flavour, and cardamon seed is supposed to aid digestion.

Overall, I think we were a bit disappointed with Ablas.  Whilst the service was great and Abla even came out to say Hi and see how everything is going, unfortunately the meat REALLY let the whole meal down.  And when the whole banquet is made up of a LOT of meat, that’s a huge letdown for everybody. 5/10