April 3, 2010
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Open Sesame Finds a Niche
Growing up, my father sought out Lebanese restaurants, invariably named Cedars or The Palms, wherever we traveled. Since that genre never found its way to Des Moines in my youth, it remained in the romantic section of my mind. That’s probably why Lebanon was the first Middle East country in the I visited after I grew up. While the Lebanese restaurant still hasn’t taken off in Middle America, Lebanese dishes have gone mainstream the last two decades, mainly in health food stores and delis. Hummus, baba ganoush, tabouleh and falafel all scored healthy profile points with the popularization of both the “Mediterranean Diet” and vegetarianism. Those dishes are more apt now to be found in university cafeteria salad bars than in old fashioned kebab houses that brought them to America. Appropriately the full spectrum Lebanese restaurant rose from the dead last year with Adonis, named for the Semitic-Greco god who is reborn each year. That café is West Glen closed though before I had finished reviewing it.
Happily, it reopened as Open Sesame last month in East Village, a neighborhood much better suited to its adventurous menu. The new place seems to be thriving. I found it completely packed as early as 5:15 for dinner seating and as late as 2 p.m. for lunch! The smallest crowd I found at Open Sesame was larger than the largest I found at Adonis. It’s not big, I counted 32 table seats plus a bar. Burgundy and purple paint, minaret stencils and Arabic music transformed a former diner into an intimate ethnic café. A flimsy curtain subbed as a vestibule that allowed arctic air to wind its way to every table when the door opened on cold nights. I could never smell meat searing, a trademark of Lebanese restaurants in my mind. That could be because vegetarianism has co-opted the menu.
Baba ganoush is a famous roasted eggplant dish in which the eggplant is scooped into a mixture of tahini and lemon juice, often with a little sumac and olive oil. Chefs argue over the ratio of lemon juice to tahini and of tahini-lemon to eggplant. Open Sesame’s version tipped slightly to the tahini side. Hummus is a paste of garbanzo beans, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and tahini. Open Sesame’s, like that made in most health food stores, was light on the olive oil and garlic. Tabouleh mixed fresh parsleys with bulghar, green onions, tomatoes, fresh mint and lemon juice but little olive oil. Fattoush produced a wonderfully zippy house dressing on romaine cucumbers, mint, tomatoes, onions and croutons.
Lentil soup varied from one visit to the next. One time the stock was so rich I wrongly suspected chicken broth. Another time there was precious little broth at all in the lentils, onions and rice.
Chicken shwarma was served with tomatoes, onions, garlic mayonnaise and pickle spears as expected. It also included fried potatoes, a method often called “Israeli style” though cookbooks say it’s also popular in the Balkans, Jordan and the UAE. Even cold, my chicken strips tasted juicy and had a seared flavor. The garlic mayo was excessive. Gyros were crusty on both sides, so likely not freshly sliced.
Kibbeh, a sort of grilled meat loaf, was the best meat I had, served hot with a good laban (yogurt).
Brunch mixed Lebanese and American dishes – gyros with potatoes and eggs. Thick crepes included one nicely stuffed with apples and walnuts.
Drinks included Turkish coffee ( cardamom and espresso), mint tea and jalab (incense infused rosewater and grape syrup).
Bottom line – Open Sesame seems to have found its niche particularly adding to vegetarian options downtown.
Open Sesame .
313 E. Locust St. 288-3151.
Mon. – Fri. 11 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. – 10 p.m.; Sat 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. and 5 p.m. – 10 p.m.. Sun. 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.
