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| - We decided to try a new Middle Easter restaurant last night and, as is always the case for us living in Goodyear, packed up the car for our own little Haj to this place light years away from suburbia. Oh well: if you can't deal with having to take a pilgrimage to eat in Phoenix, then don't move out to the middle of nowhere in the West Valley, right?
Actually, we were very happy we overcame our objections to taking out a second mortgage on the house to buy enough gas for the car and spent the 45 minutes one way to come to Ali Baba's. Definitely worth the drive.
The other half decided to go with an order of baba ganoush as an appetizer and a chicken shwarma as his main dish; I chose a variety of appetizers as my main meal: a combo plate, which came with dolmas, falafel and hummus; a side order of baba ganoush and one of labna.
Right off, we were delightfully surprised by the baba ganoush, which came to the table. While most of the baba ganoushes I've had are either smooth like hummus or a little lumpy, this one had large chunks of eggplant in it and a pleasantly smoky taste. Obviously, they must get a number of compliments about it, because while in the middle of my speech about how I've been to Middle Eastern restaurants all over the world and this baba ganoush was one of the best I've tasted, she was already thanking me out of anticipation (or maybe she could tell I was on the cusp of launching a pompous pronouncement and thought she could cut me short before my speech took up all her time before closing time 3 hours away?!).
Speaking of 'chatty', as one of the reviewers stated in a review from 20 August 2013, I would not say the proprietor is 'chatty'. She's from an area north of NYC -- though she hasn't lived there for more than 30 years -- and I would describe her as being "forthright" and "direct". This might be a bit unnerving to a lot of people out west, who tend to be reserved and not gregarious with outright strangers; but this gregariousness is very typical of New Yorkers and can be quite charming and amusing to those familiar with it (see? I told you, I was pompous and chatty!).
The labna was also quite good and very creamy. While thick, it seemed to melt in your mouth like smooth butter and I suspect that's the olive oil doing its job. The big surprise for me, however, was the combo appetizer plate: the dolmas were nothing to really talk about --- your standard, small and moist ones you can get out of a can (which may or may not be the case here, as they had a taste atypical of canned dolmas). The prize for obviously-homemade dolmas still goes to The Golden Greek and Haji Baba, whose dolmas -- while distinctly different from one another -- are obviously made in-house and are very good. The falafel were cute, small, muffin shaped and moist. They did fall apart easily when you put fork to them even though they were moist; and I don't know what this means in terms of "falafel culture" (i.e., whether that's good or not). The hummus was surprisingly thin and liquidy, which, considering how thick the labna and baba ganoush was, really surprised me. Still, quite tasty. All of this is served with copious amounts of bread, which I would NOT classify as pita (especially as the partner's chicken shwarma was on 'standard' pita). This bread was almost like a 'double-pita': thick, well toasted, crunchy. Especially useful in scooping up the thick baba ganoush. The size of the appetizer portions were quite large and thus very reasonably priced.
My partner assures me that the chicken shwarma was very good, with thick pieces of chicken and a sauce much better than at, say, Haji Baba, which we use as the Gold Standard against all Middle Eastern restaurants in the Valley. How unfortunate, that this restaurant, which measures up very good against Haji Baba, and in some respects passes it, is as far away or further from us than Haji Baba in the East Valley!
At $1.99 per piece, the baklava is reasonably priced and the portions generous. While not swimming in lemon juice and honey -- which, I admit, I'm partial to -- it is very moist. We both found it to be very sweet, but, to be fair, we generally avoid sweet foods, so our opinion on that should be taken with ... a grain of sugar? ... whatever. The strong Turkish coffee does offset that sweetness.
The only 'negative' in this whole review is the lighting. Like many restaurants in the Valley, this one is in an office in a strip mall, which was never designed to be a restaurant. Thus, it has the 'standard' tiled ceiling with fluorescent lights. It is obvious by the decoration in the restaurant, sparse as it is, that a lot of effort was taken to give the atmosphere a Middle Eastern ambience and to overcome the harshness and inhospitable feeling of being in an office. Unfortunately, the fluorescent lighting, while no doubt efficient, casts a pale, bright light over everything and this overwhelms what is otherwise very nice decor.
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