Where: 32-01 Broadway, Fair Lawn, New Jersey

What: Lebanese

Rating: 0.5/5

Although there are two locations for this restaurant, the other in Englewood where I believe the original restaurant is, I only visited the one in Fairlawn. That was enough for me. Lebanese food is by far the cuisine I am most familiar with of the ones we’ve featured so far, and perhaps that has raised my standards too high, but this was far and away the worst Lebanese restaurant I have ever been to.

We initially had trouble finding a way to get into the small parking lot here, driving up and down the road at least three or four times before finagling our way through the seemingly correct path. Walking in, we were greeted with a completely empty restaurant. I could hear people in the kitchen, but there was no one at the front. I ended up standing there waiting until the phone rang and what I can presume as the only employee who was not a chef walked out to answer it. He gestured for us to take a seat wherever we wanted, a simple feat in a completely empty supposedly amazing restaurant at peak lunch hour.

Upon being seated, we were given waters and a shockingly small menu. I tend to preview restaurant menus before making the trip over, picking out what I will order beforehand and planning out the meal. This was not quite the menu I had seen, though evidently it was their lunch special menu. Cheap? Certainly. Good variety? Not necessarily.

My hopes for arayes and labneh were quick to die.

My mother ended up finding the water unpalatable and requested bottled waters for us. As someone who cannot handle carbonation in the slightest, I opted for the classic reliable Poland Spring. She had a Pellegrino. We were also given warm pita and a small plate with olives and peppers as pictured above.

The warm pita, I would come to learn, was the most acceptable part of this meal.

One of the olives ended up uneaten as it looked as if it had gone bad, at least, that’s what my mother said to me as I cleaned off the little dirty bits from the appetizer plate given to me. Given there were no appetizers, this plate ended up going unused either way.

We both opted for platters, with myself getting the Shish Tawook Kebab and her the Sujuk. Each plate came with rice, a salad of cucumber, red onion, and tomato that I won’t give one name to as it’s name changes depending which country you venture to, and hummus. Mine, thankfully, had garlic butter, while hers came with a yogurt sauce that may have been labneh.

As someone who is not a fan of raw tomato, I refrained from eating the salad and allowed my mother to have it. The rice was fine enough, clearly heavily oiled and/or buttered, but certainly edible. The kebab tasted off, though. The chicken was not as well marinated or spiced as nicely as it should have been, meanwhile the hummus tasted only of lemon. Everything tasted of lemon. Clearly someone in the kitchen had taken lemons and squeezed them into everything, even the garlic butter tasted a bit off.

My mother’s dish was better. The sujuk was good and spicy enough to have a taste, though the rice and hummus were similarly over-lemoned. Even the yogurt sauce tasted strangely bland and lemony at the same time.

Dessert was kunefe. The bottom cheese layer was good, but the dessert was so overly soaked in honey it was mushy and a bit too sweet. It was alright, not as disappointing as the main courses, albeit close.

Perhaps my first hint should have been the complete lack of Middle Easterners on the staff team. After conferring with a family friend who goes to Lebanese restaurants almost every night, I learned the original Rose’s was a pretty good restaurant that went down in quality and up in price once they branched out.

It’s a shame, but I think I’ll be sticking to my usual more local place.

Price-wise, though, it was not too an expensive meal. Everything together rounded out to around $30; not bad for two entrees, two drinks, and a dessert. In the end, that and the pita were the two most acceptable things here, bumping the rating up to a 0.5. I’m not certain if they changed the flavor for the clientele (decidedly not individuals from that region of the world), the chef(s) not being as familiar with the cuisine as they should be, or whatever else there could be, but this is not what Lebanese food tastes like.

If you’re looking for Lebanese food, I cannot recommend going here. If you’re in New Jersey, You’re better off heading over to Paterson for real food.