Al Khawali Restaurant, Damascus

I just came back from two weeks break in Syria. I was planning lots of food research and stories and even a culinary trip to Aleppo. Instead I spent the majority of my time running from the Court House to the Ministry of Health to the Civil Registry offices trying to sort out paper work and chase a signature here and a signature there. Like the good old days.

One thing I managed to do though is a visit to Al Khawali Restaurant. There is a general consensus of the Syrian on line community and tourists that this restaurant is the best in Damascus. I never tried the place so I decided it is about time to give it a go. I headed there with my wife and family on a week day lunch. A seven of us.

You couldn't have picked a better setting for an Old City restaurant. The place is located mid way down Street Called Straight from the Bible (Via Recta or Medhat Basha Street as it is known today). It is the same street Ananais walked down to find the blind St Paul to baptise him and give him back his vision.




The restaurant is located in a beautiful restored old house with a great covered court yard that serves as the main dining hall. You enter the dining room through the VIP hall, a wood covered room with traditional Mosaic Damascene furniture. The walls are full of pictures of the great and famous who dined in the restaurant from Gloria Arroyo the Philippines president, John Kerry US presidential candidate, Joshka Fischer German Foreign Minister to many singers, actors and other famous media personalities.

The menu was a bit disappointing. It was a mixed affair of the usual Mezze/grilled meat combo and characterless western dishes. What brought my attention back was the Oriental main dishes section which included few authentic Damascene dishes that you rarely see on restaurant menu. We ended up ordering two dishes from that section.

We started with few mezze dishes to share Hummus, Mutabal, Baba Ghanoush, Fried and grilled Kibbeh and Kibbeh nayeh (raw kibbeh). We also tried Al Khwali hummus which is an interesting combination of hummus, cumin and sun-dried red peppers paste. All the mezzeh dishes were excellent. The only glitch was the hard Bulgur granules in the raw kibbeh dish. They needed to be soaked in water a bit longer.




The salads were equally good. We ordered rocket salad, fatoush and my dad favourite, lettuce hearts with Roquefort cheese dressing. Not a Syrian salad but very popular in Damascus it is on every restaurant menu.

Between the seven of us we ordered six main dishes; mixed grill, shish tawook, lamb chops, chef special of chicken in creamy za'atar sauce, basmashkat and stuffed vine leaves with lamb steak. The last two were the chices of me and my wife and both came from the "Oriental main dishes" section of the menu. Basmashkat is a dish of a very thin steak folded and stuffed with rice and ground meat mixture then cooked in a nice tomato sauce. It is a rare Damascene specialty that you hardly ever see on restaurant menu.

As a whole the main dishes were good but not as good as the mezzeh and salads. One of things I didn't like was the Bharat (Syrian mixed spice) mix they used. It was heavy on the cloves side and wasn't really to my taste. I am not a big fan of Bharat and I never use it in my cooking but after all this is individual taste.

The meal finished with complementary sweets and a nice cup of tea served in beautiful retro tea pots.