In the new and posh Village Shops at the Landmark, in the Denver Tech Center, Ali Baba Grill brings Middle Eastern food to an urban setting. Owners Fiyahd and Mahmoud come from Lebanon and have in the restaurant business since 2000. All food is cooked fresh daily with ingredients handpicked that morning. The restaurant looks as you’d expect, carved wooden chairs, gold tones and patterned tapestries that look like the Middle East.
We started with plates of hummus, falafels and fettoush salad. The hummus is creamy, topped with paprika and olive oil and served with piping hot pita bread. The crisp falafels are a delicious contrast to the smooth dip. Fettoush is a simple salad of tomato, cucumber, onion, lemon juice and parsley and we the found the veggies crisp and refreshing with the assortment of heavier dishes on the table.
Next we selected chicken shawarma, beef & lamb gyros and beef kobideh. The one disappointment was the shawarma. This dish is supposed to be a heavily spiced rotisserie-style chicken, which is shaved into bite-size pieces and presented on a bed of basmati rice. This was thick chunks of chicken breast, flavored, it seemed, only with lemon; none of the delicious, slightly oily, spiced flakes of chicken I have come to expect. Beyond this dish though, I was impressed, both with the size of the portions and the flavor of the dishes. The gyros came out heaped on a plate, big hunks of tender, salty, flavorful lamb. The kobideh – which is ground sirloin mixed with spices and formed into lumps around a skewer – was perfect, with high-quality beef, grilled medium, the juices still inside.
For dessert, the standard Middle Eastern staple, baklava. While baklava has always been a bit too sweet for my taste, the others gobbled it up happily. The flaky pastry, stuffed with pistachios and coated with honey, certainly looked delicious.
We’ll definitely return to Ali Baba. The service and the food were both a treat; a welcome deviation from all the trendy New American food in Greenwood Village.
