| rev:text
| - 3.5 stars.
Visited Byblos for the first time... and left a little disappointed.
Was it the hype? Was it the 4.5 average star reviews on Yelp? Probably a bit of both.
I came by Byblos on Monday night (6:30 pm) to a surprisingly more empty restaurant than I imagined. Reservations to this place are hard to get, but it seemed like I could have easily walked in and gotten a table.
What we ordered-
1) Lamb Ribs: These were delicious... but SMALL. Seriously, why did no one else on Yelp mention how small these were? Pictures can be very deceiving. At first, I was surprised lamb ribs were $14 at a high end restaurant, but it made sense when I saw them. The dish was 4 lamb ribs, each barely 4 inches long. Now again, these were delicious, the seasoning on them were very good, but it wasn't anything too special. Lamb ribs are naturally delicious. 4/5
2) Roasted Beets: This was the stand out dish of Bylbos. It was amazing. It came accompanied with a side of bread that was seasoned similar to the lamb ribs. The bread tastes great with the cheese and olive oil. It's almost Italian-like, as it really reminded me of a burrata dish. Also, don't let the "beets" part scare you off. My girlfriend and I don't like beets, so we almost didn't order this, but the beets really were not the focus of the dish... the cheese and bread are. To comment on the beets itself, they were delicious, but they were even smaller than the lamb ribs. 5/5. Order this.
3) Turkey Manti Dumplings: My girlfriend really looked forward to this dish. When she had the first one, I could tell she was disappointed. I tried it next, and I could understand why. The flavour was good, but it was... very lacking. The dumplings don't have a lot of filling, it was mostly dough that tastes good because of the yoghurt sauce. Some dumplings didn't have any filling at all. We left this plate half eaten. Not sure why it was highly touted on Yelp. 2.5/5.
4) Crispy Squid: It's good but c'mon... it's fried calamari. There's really nothing much else to say about it. Fried calamari is always good isn't it? But... is it traditional Mediterranean food? I dunno. Probably not. 3.5/5.
5) Tartufata: Being Chinese, my parents would be pissed off if they found out I spent $30 on rice that didn't even have any meat in it hahaha. Anyways, this was a rice with mushrooms, chick peas and truffle. It was tasty because the aroma with the truffle was very good. We mainly used this to compliment the squid, dumpling sauce and cauliflower. Hard to rate... I'd say a 3.5/5 but I would not recommend this. The value just isn't there, and their other rices seems more interesting in hindsight. 3.5/5.
6) Seared Cauliflower: This sidedish was cauliflower seared with duck fat. I'm a little hesitant to give Byblos credit for this dish because you can take any vegetable and sear it with bacon fat, steak fat or duck fat and it'll taste good. I personally liked this dish because I'm into strong flavours, but I can see how others can see this dish as "fatty" or "heavy". Regardless, 4/5.
7) Loukoumades (Dessert): This dessert was great! It is essentially a bunch of small fried timbits surrounding icecream, topped with edible flower petals and burnt honey. I don't even like desserts and I found this to be excellent. Strongly recommend this if you're going to get a dessert. 5/5.
I want to warn you about the service. It's really slow. I came on a relatively quiet Monday night and my server did not do very well. It took a long time to do anything like taking our order, bringing out our food and bringing us the bill.
I like the fact that someone will describe to you the dish when it arrives, but it wasn't done as well as Lee's restaurant. The servers at Byblos just spew out memorized lines really fast, instead of actually educating you about the dish or how to eat it. Go to Lee's and you'll see how they do it much better at explaining their dishes.
Would I come back? Maybe. There's a couple things left on the menu I want to try but would I rave about it to my friends and coworkers? No, there's better places to spend your money or to celebrate an occasion.
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