Tag Archives: Iraqi restaurants

Iraqi feast = peak CTS experience

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Bakhdida Cafe and Restaurant, 42 Knight Avenue, Sunshine North. Phone: 0403 440 174

Prowling the back streets of Sunshine North after dark is a weird feeling – creepy even.

No one around, the panelbeaters and all the other businesses hereabouts closed, little by way of street lighting.

But as we arrive at the block on which Bakhdida lives, parking is at a premium.

Entering the restaurant – the main room is really more of a hall – we discover the reason for that: A couple of dozen guests happily playing cards and the like.

Yes, this is an eatery-cum-social club of the kind found all over the west in a dizzying array of cultural affiliations.

But don’t let that put you off.

Actually, let me re-phrase that: DEFINITELY don’t let that put you off, because you REALLY, REALLY do want to visit and enjoy Bakhdida.

Here you’ll be served wonderful Iraqi food.

Much of the long and extremely affordable menu is familiar in the Middle Eastern way, though there are a few points of difference along the journey.

Proprietor Abraham Pitros and his crew are really on the ball, with our many dishes arriving looking gorgeous and after what seemed like hardly any time at all.

The restaurant is named after the northern Iraqi town from whence Abraham originated.

Pickles are served with several of our other dishes as garnishes, but it’s a good thing we order a dedicated serve of them ($5) with olives – because we love them a lot and eat of them heartily.

Cabbage, celery, some carrot and – best of all – many cauliflower florets have a turmeric hue, are delicious and are made with love by Abraham’s mum.

A good whack of turmeric is also at play in the dipping concoction that comes with our falafel ($15).

The falafel – in the shape of small donuts and looking a bit like vada – are golden outside and in, very plain in the seasoning department and very good.

Mixed dips ($10) – eggplant, gagic, hommus – are every bit as excellent as you’d expect and accompanied by a sort-of ratatouille and cabbage salad.

We enjoy them with good house-made Iraqi bread – hollow in the middle like the Lebanese variation with which we’re familiar, but a bit thicker.

Under the roof of pita chips is a top-notch rendition of fatoosh ($5).

Sliced beetroot ($5) is OK, but is so plain it gets a bit lost amid all the other zingy flavours we are loving.

Just like all the other guests this night, we get to try (at no charge) this un-named kitchen trial dish.

It’s made of large yellow cucumber slices and come across as a cross between a pickle and a salad.

It, too, is great.

Lamb shawerma ($16) is chewy, a little crispy and quite salty – just as we like it!

Mixed skewers ($16) are succulent, awesome – and seemingly unseasoned in any way.

But that’s fine, actually, as there’s plenty of hyped-up flavour action going on elsewhere on our table.

Saving the best until last?

Pretty much!

In meat tashreeb ($16), the cooking juices soak into the bread, upon which resides a generous serving of lamb shank meat – gamey, tender, superb and plentiful enough for all five of us to have a good taste.

Will we return to Bakhdida?

Yes.

Again and again and again …

It is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week.

Thanks to Julian, Nat, Christine and Bennie for making up the evening’s Team CTS.

Al Sharouk Woodfired Oven

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Al Sharouk Woodfired Oven, 544-546 Mahoneys Rd, Campbellfield. Phone: 9359 5773

On a previous, mid-week visit to Al Sharouk with Bennie and Nat, we’d been greeted by a well-stuffed Middle East-style grocery but little by way of eat-in food – or, at least, none that tempted us sufficiently to linger.

Second time around, and flying solo, my desires are a little different.

Lunch, a meal, for sure – but I’m also seeking some specialised Middle East ingredients.

This is so I can roll up my sleeves and get cooking some of the marvellous recipes in Delights From The Garden Of Eden by Nawal Nasrallah, an epic Iraqi cookbook I received in the mail a few days earlier.

This tome – packed with recipes for mostly home-style Iraqi food, countless anecdotes and much food history going back several thousand years – has been secured on the no-doubt righteous recommendation by Annia Ciezadlo in her cool book Day Of Honey.

I feel sure Delights From The Garden Of Eden will be the cause of many, many future years of pleasurable reading and cooking.

But I feel nonplussed as I step through the door of Al Sharouk and discover … that it is now all restaurant and no grocery.

Oh well – I take an upbeat, half-full approach and thoroughly enjoy my lunch and talking with Al Sharouk proprietor Martin.

He’s an Iraqi Christian who moved to Australia more than three decades ago, although his Campbellfield eat shop has been open for just nine months.

It’s no surprise, then, he knows all about the ingredients I seek – baharat, a spice mix that is a sort-of Iraqi equivalent of garam masala; and noomi basrah, which are dried limes.

Martin reckons I should have little trouble securing them from the likes of Al-alamy in Coburg or International Foods in Altona.

As he’s expressed an interest in having a quick look at my new book, I scarper back to my car as he’s knocking my lunch together.

There’s a range of salads and dips on display. Pies and pizzas from the mighty wood-fired oven are available, too.

But I quickly zero in on the two stews available – one a pale number with lamb shanks, the other more of a tomato-based effort with lamb on the bone and chickpeas.

I go for the latter, which turns out to be a variation on Iraqi stews called tashreeb. These are traditionally served on a base of flat bread.

But I’m plenty happy to have mine with Martin’s rice, which he calls an Iraqi biryani.

It’s beaut and studded with peanuts, peas, currants and – most appropriately – the dried limes called noomi basrah, which impart of sublime tartness. Think of something along the lines of a mild Indian lime pickle.

This is very homely food much to my liking – the rice riches work well with the tashreeb chickpeas, and I even get a silky, tender whole onion.

But that’s not all – my single piece of lamb is superbly, predictably tender and toothsome.

Martin has two kinds of chooks getting the heat treatment from his spit pit – the first lot are whole stuffed birds referred to in Delights From The Garden Of Eden as Pregnant Chicken; the second are butterflied birds in lemon and garlic.

I buy a half animal of the latter to take home, but wish I’d gone with a whole of the former – they look so plump and sexy, and are likely a fine bargain at $12.

Other than that, I forget to check prices – suffice to say Al Sharouk is a genuine cheap eats haven, as my lamb rice lunch, a can of soft drink and half a chook to go come to $22.

It’s been cool meet Martin and enjoy some of the kind of food I soon hope to be cooking my own self.

Al Sharouk Woodfired Oven on Urbanspoon

McKebab

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McKebab, 49 Gordon St, Footscray. Phone: 9317 9132

It’s not precisely, literally a hole in the wall, but McKebab has that sort of vibe about it.

This tiny kebab shop is situated next door to a convenience store, with both of them sitting on the ground floor of what is otherwise as a spectacularly ugly building.

Across the street is the pokies pub known as the Powell. Across Ballarat Rd, but still on Gordon St, is a foodie strip – a fish and chip shop, pizza place, Korean noodle hang, a couple of Indian eateries – that seems forever to be waiting for that magic spark.

It seems that often in the west, and no doubt elsewhere, businesses and their operators must make do with situations, locations and premises that are presented to them, that are affordable.

In this case, we suspect that what presents as a simple kebab joint has the capacity and knowledge to present more home-style cooking of the Turkish/Iraqi family that runs it.

We wish them well if that is the case.

Certainly we enjoy our brief visit and the friendly service we receive.

As we take one of the two tiny interior tables, we strike up a conversation with two blokes at the other who turn out to be senior players for the same rugby club for which Bennie plays. Like him, they too have enjoyed success earlier in the day.

It is the home-style dish that draws our eyes and impresses the most.

Well, impresses me the most anyway.

As we’re returning from a friend’s birthday party in Hoppers Crossing, Bennie is already quite full of party pies, sausage rolls, saveloys and chips, and would prefer to be at the burger place up the road anyway.

Later in the week, buddy!

We order “green beans, rice and salad” ($9.90), with the main protagonist turning out to be fasolea.

This is a fantastic, tangy dish of green beans tomato, capsicum, what is described to me as an “Arabic herb”, onion, garlic, salt and pepper.

The beans are, of course, very tender, but I find the whole thing delicious.

The tabouli is a tad too dry and onion-y for us, but the rice is fine.

The house-made turshi – pickled turnip – is fantastic, salty, bitter and crunchy.

We order as well four felafel balls, which are freshly made and good, with an inwardly greenish hue and a smooth, ungranulated texture.

The hummus that accompanies is smooth and mild of flavour and the bread – housemade, too – is like a cross between Lebanese pita and Turkish bread.

No doubt because of their location – students above, boozer across the road – the McKebab folks face heavy demand for your typical kebab options.

But we hope they hang in there with some more home-style fare.

Babylon Restaurant

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152 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 3323. Open six days.

You can go the whole hog if you visit Babylon – or rather the whole sheep.

Roast whole lamb – pre-ordered and with all the trimmings of “rice, meat ball, boiled egg, nodule (sic), green beans, pistachios, carrots, fried onion” – will set you back $220.

You can also order a regular Aussie-style pizza or a Lebanese pizza – even though this nominally an Iraqi restaurant – and pasta or spring rolls.

There’s even a kind of chicken or lamb curry usually available from the servery out front.

There are heaps and heaps of the more expected kebabs, seafood, salads, dips and soups – and knowing just how good the soups around here, perhaps the Babylon variations should be a priority.

Whatever its ethnic heritage, Babylon fits in right swell with the swirling colours, tastes and general all-round good vibes of this part of Nicholson St, rubbing shoulders as it does with eateries and cafes of Turkish, African, Indian and Vietnamese persuasions.

But my favourite for some time has been the lamb shanks, which are also dispensed from the servery, the contents and quality of which seem to depend on the time of day. I suspect the later the hour, the more advisable it becomes to go a la carte, as sometimes the servery options look a tad jaded and dry.

On my previous visit I enjoyed an outstanding $10 meal of adana kebab with all the bits and pieces.

But for my latest lunch I’m in luck, with the platter of shanks sitting and glistening and waiting for someone to eat them. Can glistening be a verb?

One meaty shank with salad, dips and rice costs a really fine $12.

I’m happy to go with flow at Babylon so am unsurprised that this meal is different from the same order previously made.

The three dips – eggplant, carrot, yogurt/cucumber – are not quite as great and tasty as on previous visits, nor the salad.

And instead of the distinctive flat bread that manages to be both chewy and flaky, I receive a bowl of bread more in the Turkish vein. Though as its hot and fresh out of the oven, I’m happy.

The rice, as with that of so many businesses around here, is to die for – laced with sultanas, almonds, green peas and ma’akarona (vermicelli fried in butter). My thanks to Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog for the details of that last listed ingredient!

But it’s the shank that’s the standout – meat so very tender and easy to pry from the bone, smothered in a thick, gooey tomato-based gravy given added richness this time round by the addition of some soft white beans.

Despite the usual – and actually welcome – variations from visit to visit, Babylon sets a high standard and I intend to spend the next several years mining their menu to its depths.

It’s a big, roomy restaurant that can seem a bit gloomy when you’ve just wandered in from outside, but it’s fine for dining.

At night, there are often cheerful tables of Iraqi families. By day, a veritable rainbow of locals can be seen chowing down.

The coffee is very good, too, as are the sweets such as baklava.

There’s a five-item kids menu – all at $4.95 – that includes spag bol, chicken/lamb souvlaki and chicken fillets.

As I am paying for my lunch, I am bemused to notice a row of slim bottles of Crystal Hot Sauce – the very same brand that tarted up so many of my meals in New Orleans, but in this case the labels also printed with Arabic!

For coffee this time, though, I wander across to Cafe D’Afrique for a very excellent $2.50 latte.

I love this neighbourhood!

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